Myth, Mirror Neurons, and Stanislavski

Is there such a thing as a professional Wise Woman?

2010-07-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have been wondering what to do in my crone years. I mean, that is coming soon, and I want to be useful and to enjoy it. But what to do? I remember many years ago being taken to an older woman's house on a Sunday afternoon and paying, what $10 to sit in her living room and hear her talk and answer questions and use her age, wisdom, and insight to help the people in attendance. I know that many of them met with her privately as well. I don't know what she was called. I mean Life Coach certainly doesn't fit, she wasn't a professional psychologist or a psychiatrist. She was just a woman whose advice and ideas were valuable and inspiration, at least to me.

I suspect that in this day and age, Wise Woman, has all kinds of herbal and crystal implications, and that isn't what I mean.

I have been tossing around "Conversational Empath" or "Insightful Listener" or "Professional Conversationalist."

I have been trying to figure out how I would get clients. Maybe as an adjunct to a really fabulous Day Spa? A special event at a bar, give her $20 and a Scotch and she will talk to you about you for a half hour? Or get a sign like Lucy in Charley Brown and sit at the big table at Meinl's?

I mean, I am not a psychic, nor a healer, nor a seer, I am just very good at helping people talk their way into something meaningful and then offering some ideas of direction. So maybe, Assistant Living Director?

Any ideas, let me know. I have been looking at the life coaching sites, but the all seem much more about being a success in the world and I just want people to find that success within themselves first. And, lots of the Life Coaches are Christian and as you know that is not high on my agenda.

Pretty soon, I am just going to go to a bar or a coffee shop on a slow night, sweet talk the manager, sit at a table and set up a sign- "What do you need to talk about? $20 a half hour plus drinks. "

Hey, maybe the title would be "life facilitator"? Seems awfully cold though.

Summer Teaching in Mpls

2010-07-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

I will be teaching a class in Minneapolis this Summer, August 26-29th and there are still openings, so if you want to reserve a place, just e-me or call me at 773 561 1935

Acting for Non-Beginners

Two options to study with Jane Brody this summer-

Reawakening Your Possibilities-Single session
Thursday Aug 26 6:30-9:30, $50
or
Acts of Creation and Courage-Full session
Friday-Sunday, $250.00
Aug 27: Friday night- 6:30-9pm, Exploration and creation based exercises based on "Effort at Speech Between Two People."
Aug 28: Saturday day 11am-6pm, Exploration of “Effort” based in Super Scenes
Aug 29: Sunday day 12am-5pm, Putting all the elements together, ending in performance. We will invite a small audience of loved one.

Hopefully we will all gather for a Celebration Dinner following the workshop.

We will work at The Director’s Studio, 1170 15th Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 612-746-1372

To register- please e-mail Jane at Jbrody845@gmail.com with whatever picture and resume you may have.

Send your deposit or the full amount to:
Jane Brody, 4926 N Wolcott, Chicago, IL 60640

RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

2010-06-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

myth, Mirror Neuron and Stanislavski

2010-04-14T05:16:00.001-07:00

As a learn by doing kinda person, I don't know how to put my article, Myth, Mirror Neurons, and Stanislavski in first position on my blog. But if you go to Nov 2009, it is there!

First Direct Evidence For Mirror Neurons Found

2010-04-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

First Direct Evidence For Mirror Neurons Found Here is some had data which seems to prove the existence of mirror neurons. Very exciting!

Brain scans read memories

2010-03-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

Brain scans read memories

What did the Supreme Court just do to our democracy? | freespeechforpeople.org

2010-01-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

What did the Supreme Court just do to our democracy? freespeechforpeople.org

Reasons to Warm Up beyond vocal and physical conditioning

2009-12-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

A brain mechanism for facilitation of insight by positive affect

Source

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience archive
Volume 21 , Issue 3 () table of contents

Pages 415-432

Year of Publication: 2009

ISSN:0898-929X

Authors

Karuna Subramaniam
John Kounios
Todd B. Parrish
Mark Jung-Beeman

Publisher

MIT Press Cambridge, MA, USA

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that people solve insight or creative problems better when in a positive mood (assessed or induced), although the precise mechanisms and neural substrates of this facilitation remain unclear. We assessed mood and personality variables in 79 participants before they attempted to solve problems that can be solved by either an insight or an analytic strategy. Participants higher in positive mood solved more problems, and specifically more with insight, compared with participants lower in positive mood. fMRI was performed on 27 of the participants while they solved problems. Positive mood (and to a lesser extent and in the opposite direction, anxiety) was associated with changes in brain activity during a preparatory interval preceding each solved problem; modulation of preparatory activity in several areas biased people to solve either with insight or analytically. Analyses examined whether (a) positive mood modulated activity in brain areas showing responsivity during preparation; (b) positive mood modulated activity in areas showing stronger activity for insight than noninsight trials either during preparation or solution; and (c) insight effects occurred in areas that showed mood-related effects during preparation. Across three analyses, the ACC showed sensitivity to both mood and insight, demonstrating that positive mood alters preparatory activity in ACC, biasing participants to engage in processing conducive to insight solving. This result suggests that positive mood enhances insight, at least in part, by modulating attention and cognitive control mechanisms via ACC, perhaps enhancing sensitivity to detect non-prepotent solution candidates.

REFERENCES

Photo is Worth a Thousand Ways to Change Your Memory by David DiSalvo

2009-12-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

This article has a lot to say to actors because it reinforces the need for images of the given circumstances.

Photo is Worth a Thousand Ways to Change Your Memory

by David DiSalvo

Most of us realize that memory is fallible. We forget things all the time–car keys, passwords, whether we turned off the oven, etc. But how many of us would admit that our memory is susceptible to change from the outside? That’s different from simply forgetting–something everyone does on their own–because someone else changing our memory requires “getting in our heads” so to speak, right?
If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I’m about to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s probable. And it doesn’t even take very much effort to accomplish–just a few images and a little time.
A recent study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology tested whether showing people photos of completed actions–such as a broken pencil or an opened envelope–could influence them to believe they’d done something they had not, particularly if they were shown the photos multiple times.

Participants were presented with a series of objects on a table, and for each object were asked to either perform an action or imagine performing an action (i.e. “crack the walnut”). One week later, the same participants were brought back and randomly presented with a series of photos on a computer screen, each of a completed action (i.e. a cracked walnut), either one, two or three times. Other participants were not shown any photos.
One week later, they were brought back to complete a memory test in which they were presented with action phrases (i.e. “I cracked a walnut”) and asked to answer whether they had performed the action, imagined performing it, or neither, and rate their confidence level for each answer on a scale of one to four.
The results: the more times people were exposed to a photo of a completed action, the more often they thought they’d completed the action, even though they had really only imagined doing it. Those shown a photo of a completed action once were twice as likely to erroneously think they’d completed the action than those not shown a photo at all.   People shown a photo three times were almost three times as likely as those not shown a photo.

Two factors in this study speak to the malleability of memory. The first is duration of time. The experiment was carried out with a week between each session, enough time for the specific objects and actions to become a little cloudy in memory, but not enough time to be forgotten.  This lines up well with real-world situations, such as someone providing eye-witness testimony, in which several days if not weeks might elapse between recollections of events.

The second factor is repeat exposure to images. The study showed that even just one exposure to a photo of a completed action strongly influenced incorrect memory. Multiple exposures significantly increased the errors. One real-world takeaway from this result is potentially alarming: the possibility of using images to alter someone’s memory of a face or other critical element such that his/her testimony is tainted.
A similar study discussed here tackled the same sort of memory issues with video instead of photos, and found a similar result. Both studies point to a realization becoming clearer with time: memory is far more changeable than most of us realize.

Henkel, L. (2009). Photograph-induced memory errors: When photographs make people claim they have done things they have not Applied Cognitive Psychology DOI: 10.1002/acp.1644

Creativity Lives far From Home...(feat. Aliens!) | Psydir News

2009-12-05T11:56:00.001-08:00

Creativity Lives far From Home...(feat. Aliens!) | Psydir News

Read this article and get your passport!

Marriage Help: Better Living through Cognitive Dissonance | Psydir News

2009-12-05T01:39:00.001-08:00

Marriage Help: Better Living through Cognitive Dissonance | Psydir News

Posted using ShareThis

Grotowski, songs, archetypes, myths, everything!

2009-12-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

A Search for the Oldest Songs in the World
Out of the crucible of modern Polish theatre comes Teatr ZAR, haunted by death, memory and the primal power of ancient song
By Jim O'Quinn

Songs grow directly from reactions to life's travails; they come from something "under the skin," something wholly organic.
—Jerzy Grotowski
How did Poland's Teatr ZAR set about rescuing the oldest songs in the world from the oblivion of history? And why has the Wroclaw-based company—currently on a U.S. tour that began last month in Chicago and continues this month in Los Angeles—made these rare archaic songs the generative element of its extraordinary, virtuosic performances?
Jarosław Fret, the 38-year-old actor and student of ethnomusicology who founded Teatr ZAR in 2002, has forthright answers to these questions. The richly harmonic liturgical chants and funeral songs that inspire his company's work were collected, he will tell you, during a series of group expeditions between 1999 and 2003 to historic religious sites in Georgia, Greece, Bulgaria, Corsica, Sardinia, Egypt and Iran, including forays into isolated communities in the remote heights of the Caucasus Mountains, where musical traditions date back 2,000 years. The songs that he and his collaborators collected on these expeditions, he says, became their primary material, their fundamental means of theatrical communication, a metaphor that "gives you a very deep, essential understanding of what the process and tradition of life, which includes death, is."
Teatr ZAR's performances—which consist so far of a triptych of low-tech ensemble pieces, none of them more than 55 minutes long—have begun to attract rapturous attention from observers around the world, not least from theatre practitioners engaged in thematically or formally similar work. But Fret's passion for the revelatory power of ancient music as a theatrical source is part of a larger historical picture involving that sometimes elusive sphere known as "laboratory theatre." And Teatr ZAR's new status as an international ambassador for the most influential branch of contemporary Polish theatre—that indebted to the multifaceted, sometimes paradoxical investigations of Jerzy Grotowski—makes this a telling moment to revisit (here and in Stephen Nunns's companion article, below) some of the seismic shifts in world theatre that the laboratory movement has generated.
Fret, who combines his role of ZAR artistic director with the leadership, since 2004, of the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, has been a moving force in the most recent phases of that history. Under his directorship, the institute is in the process of expanding from its modest niche in the city's vibrant Old Market Square—the premises from 1965 to 1982 of Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre, where legendary works such as Apocalypsis cum figuris were first performed—to a spacious new multipurpose building (previously a rowing club for athletes) on Na Grobli Street along the treelined Oder River, scheduled to open next April. And when 2009 (marking 50 years since Grotowski became artistic director of what would soon be known as the Laboratory Theatre, and 10 years since Grotowski's death in 1999) was declared by UNESCO the "Year of Grotowski," Fret and the institute geared up to host an unprecedented slate of international programs celebrating Grotowski's far-flung legacy [see the May/June '09 issue of American Theatre].
It was at one of these events—a two-week festival in June somewhat ostentatiously titled "The World as a Place of Truth"—that I saw performances of the three works in ZAR's repertoire, one of which, Caesarean Section, made its U.S. debut at Chicago's Millennium Park in November. This month, West Coast audiences have the chance to see all three parts of the triptych when it plays Dec. 1—3 at UCLA Live in Los Angeles. At home in Wroclaw, even in the midst of a lineup of festival productions by the likes of Peter Brook, Tadashi Suzuki, Pina Bausch and Christian Lupa, ZAR's work made a singular, indelible impression.
The trilogy, on which ZAR has been working since its inception, begins with a somber, ritualistic piece called Gospels of Childhood: Fragments on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, developed over the course of three years before it debuted in Brzezinka, the forested haven 25 miles northeast of Wroclaw where Grotowski once conducted his paratheatrical research. (It subsequently had a successful run in Los Angeles as part of the 2007 UCLA Live International Theatre Festival, becoming the first and only ZAR production exported from Poland prior to the current tour.) Abstract in form and dimly lit, mostly by candles, some attached to hanging wooden wheels that become glistening chandeliers, Gospels draws upon the biblical story of the burial and resurrection of Lazarus, augmented by fragments of text from Dostoyevsky and Simone Weil. Its fluid and meticulous choreography replicates acts of childbirth, suffering, washing, communal mourning; its songs and chants infuse every image with an overpowering sense of the sacred.
Caesarean Section: Essays on Suicide, the second, more extravagantly theatrical segment of the trilogy, involves its seven performers in lissome feats of physical strength and endurance and adds live instruments—cello, violin, accordion, percussion—to its musical arsenal. In considering Albert Camus's famous formulation—"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide"—Caesarean Section, Fret has said, concerns "not only artistic freedom but real freedom, and the limits of your life." Its central visual motif is an illuminated river of glass that slashes across the length of the stage, around which the barefoot performers (including the remarkable Ditte Berkeley, wearing shoes on her hands), dangerously convulse and writhe, perhaps in pain, perhaps in ecstasy. With its intimations of a love triangle and its exhilarating physicality, this performance is cruel, beautiful, sometimes slyly funny and altogether inimitable.
The final segment, Anhelli: The Calling, still a work-in-progress when I saw it in Wroclaw, uses Byzantine and Sardinian hymns to pay tribute to Juliusz Slowacki, a Polish Romantic poet who journeyed to the Holy Land to write a stylized, Biblical poem (Anhelli) about possession by an angel. A deftly manipulated room-sized parachute of translucent cloth provides a phantasmagoric frame for this piece, which ends with the performers prone and silent beneath its folds (an echo, perhaps, of Grotowski's The Constant Prince, which ended with Ryszard Ciećlak in a similar posture).
Spectators' responses to these intricately detailed and passionately realized works, with their intimations of mourning and mortality, punctuated by unsettling interludes of silence and pitch-black darkness, will vary, but indifference is not an option. "This is unlike anything I've ever sat through," wrote Back Stage critic Wenzel Jones after seeing Gospels of Childhood in Los Angeles. "The audience, perhaps in thrall to the sanctified aura that's left, sits in utter silence, applause seeming too coarse a response." L.A.-based director Guy Zimmerman, a fellow guest at the Wroclaw festival, shared his impressions of Caesarean Section in a note to colleagues: "Performed with such fearless abandon the jaw drops. Humor here and there like dollops of blood. Halfway through, the ghost of Antonin Artaud shuffles in and sits next to the ghost of Grotowski in the back row, toothlessly grinning."
When we begin to catch the vibratory qualities [of an ancient song], this finds its rooting in the impulses and actions. And then, all of a sudden, that song begins to sing us. That ancient song sings me; I don't know anymore if I am finding that song or if I am that song. —Grotowski
The world of "laboratory theatre"—a term deftly defined by Italian theatre scholar Mirella Schino in Alchemists of the Stage (2009) as "a protected, separate place where it is possible to continuously explore in order to perfect one's art or craft, without having to make compromises"—stretches across the 20th century from the Moscow studios of Stanislavsky to the Odin Teatret of Eugenio Barba in Denmark to Joan Littlewood's London Theatre Workshop to the Japanese mountain retreat of Tadashi Suzuki, and even, in significant instances such as Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre, into ensemble work in the U.S. But it was Grotowski who pushed the laboratory concept farthest, into the realms of ethics, spirituality, the internal truth of the actor, "a meeting with oneself."
His well-known focus on the body as an expressive instrument is Grotowski's most evident bequest to posterity. But music—especially music retrieved from memory or from history—inspired him as well, especially in his later "theatre of sources" research. As Princeton-based theatre scholar Kathleen Cioffi has noted in her writing about Polish alternative theatre, there are a variety of groups now working in Poland that draw upon this research (conducted, ironically, largely outside their country) to combine Grotowski-inspired physicality with work on traditional or ancient songs—beginning with Wlodzimierz Staniewski's distinguished company Gardzienice, founded in 1977, where Jarosław Fret became a member at age 20 and worked for a year-and-a-half. He subsequently worked (as did his ZAR cohort Kamila Klamut) with the Wroclaw-based company Song of the Goat, another notable music-focused ensemble.
"It was Gardzienice that taught me how to approach the music, what it means to be inspired by traditional singing, and how to do your own dramaturgy related to it," says Fret, a handsome man with alert brown eyes and an unassuming manner. "Soon after coming to work there, I understood what I wanted to do."
Fret had direct access to Grotowski as well, first meeting him as a teenager in 1991 when Grotowski was presented an honorary doctorate—"I was listening to his speech in this very room at the institute," he remembers with a smile—and later assisting him organizing projects and productions. "I talked with him often, and worked with many of his collaborators. But the most important thing was watching theatre here, experiencing 'poor theatre.' Eventually this became the only work I could imagine."
It is astonishing work to watch. Rather than attempt to evoke the rarified atmosphere of ZAR's performances—which require studio-sized rooms with a limited number of spectators (in Wroclaw it was 40 or so)—let me recount (with the assistance of eloquent notes from my festival colleague Barbara Lanciers, co-director of New York City's Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf) what I saw at a lecture-demonstration that Fret and his 11-member troupe offered visitors during the course of the festival.
It began with a slide show of images from ZAR's seminal research excursions, with Fret narrating: "At a Greek Orthodox church in Tblisi, there was one choir of old men, one of boys, and one mixed"—there they are, figures seemingly out of time—"each representing a different tradition. These choirs date back to the 10th century in Georgia, and the churches even further, to the 6th century." Other images are sparer and greener, showing the Svaneti region, in the highest reaches of the Caucasus, where the homes and churches are shaped as towers. "Svaneti was our deepest meeting—it was there that we heard zar, the lamentations sung by a huge choir of men over and over for hours during funerals. We decided to name our work ZAR—not just the group but the work—as a recognition that we are just one element in an unbroken chain connecting us to our ancestors."
The oldest of the Svanetian songs, Fret explains, have archaic words and syllables that are no longer understood by the singers themselves, but continue to be performed. Many have pagan roots. "We heard a song there," he says, "whose purpose was to stop the rain, one to call forth the sun, one to send souls to heaven."
Fret calls the company forward. They are barefoot, the men in white shirts like college youths on a Sunday outing, the women in plain black or maroon shifts with dancers' body suits underneath. In semicircles or clusters, they begin to sing, avidly listening to each other's voices, sharing the polyphonies and rhythms of these mournful, yearning songs with gentle arm and body movements, conducting themselves with a focused intensity.
The songs roll from syllable to syllable, austere and thick, often with a gasp at the end of a phrase, sometimes coalescing into a shocking, piercing unity on a single note. The wall of sound fills the brick-walled studio space like liquid; then, above the aural mass, the wail of a single female voice streams high, like a bird above a storm.
The song becomes the meaning itself through the vibratory qualities; even if
one doesn't understand the words, reception
alone of the vibratory qualities is enough. —Grotowski
How does this remarkable music relate to the equally remarkable physical score in ZAR's performances? "Simply performing the songs was not enough—we went on to create movement and theatricality," Fret tells me later in an interview over coffee. "A song is like a journey, with a beginning and a destination. Parallel to the patterns of rhythm in the songs, we began to develop physical training, integrated work for physical action. Every single action must be found in the practice of singing, and only at the last phase do the two come together.
"We are all singers—first we share that. We establish relationships with one another based on patterns of breathing. When we sing, we have common feelings and perceptions—the next step is to open ourselves to actions, breathing together as one organism. The physical score is prepared out of improvisations, inspired by fragments of text, themes, perhaps poems. Putting it all together is a unique fusion of energy. The physical score acts in strong counterpoint to the music."
As absorbing as the company's physical virtuosity may be, it is sound that Fret gives pride of place. "Theatre is more than something to be seen—to be heard is more essential. First we are listeners, secondarily we are seers. Human beings are much more deeply attached to sound than to sight—even in the womb, we hear speaking, singing, vibrations. We can even see each human being as a vibration, a unique sound."
Critics have alluded to the church-like aura of ZAR's performances, but Christian symbology is not what interests Fret. "Yes, I grew up in a Christian society, a very strong Christian family. But many in ZAR are not Christians....that is not the point of our work. Meeting with these songs means meeting with people whose details and differences you respect."
Perhaps Fret's modulation of his Grotowskian inheritance amounts to a distancing from both his mentor's insistence on the heroic "holy actor" (on the laying bare of "the most intimate layers of his being and his instinct," as Grotowski put it) and from his eventual rejection of the audience, in favor of a certain communal utility in the meeting of performer and spectator. "The only task for us as human beings is to remember," Fret suggests. "Our body has its unconscious memory, and the highest means for its discovery is art."
Memory, of course, is both personal and collective. Fret mentions that his own grandfather, who died when Fret was 17, was once a funeral singer, and that the final song in Gospels of Childhood is a kind of Polish zar that moved him deeply when it was sung at his grandfather's funeral. In a darker vein, he talks broodingly about Poland herself, which lost more than 5 million citizens during World War II. "Death is close to us here—the ground beneath us is made of bones and ashes," he remarks simply, as if to validate the emphasis in his work on mourning and redemption.
Barbara Lanciers asked Fret a fundamental question—"For you, what is the purpose of theatre?"—and the answer he gave seems more empathetic than the words Growtowski might have uttered on the subject: It is, Fret said, "to fill this void or emptiness, and share not only our pain with others—because pain is the only evidence that we live—but also the feelings and experiences of living...what it means to be alive."
Jim O'Quinn's trip to Poland was supported in part by Philip Arnoult's Center for International Theatre Development.
Ludwik Flaszen and the Pragmatics of Grotowski
The legendary director's one-time partner talks about the secret politics of the Polish Laboratory Theatre
By Stephen Nunns
"I am astonished that all of this happened during my life," says the short, white-haired man, peering into his steaming cup of tea as though he expected some revelation to materialize there. "I am trying to understand it all—everything that happened."
For the past 50 years, Ludwik Flaszen has lived and worked in the shadow of his one-time friend and artistic partner, the theatre director/guru Jerzy Grotowski. While the cult of Grotowski has grown apace since his death in 1999—notably in the "art as vehicle" projects that consumed the last decade of his life and continue to be explored at the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in Pontedera, Italy—the 79-year-old Flaszen has been largely ignored. But, in fact, had it not been for Flaszen, a critic and dramaturg, the work of the legendary Polish Laboratory Theatre—on which Grotowski's theatrical and post-theatrical legacy is largely based—might never have happened.
Now, sitting in the offices of the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw—the home of the company that created and performed the trio of works that are at the center of Grotowski's reputation (Akropolis, The Constant Prince and Apocalypsis cum Figuris)—Flaszen is attempting to set the record straight.
The Institute has braced itself for a "year of Grotowski," a series of high-profile international events marking the 10th anniversary of the director's death, which continue through the end of 2009. "There are many old people who are coming to these events," Flaszen observes with a laugh, setting his tea aside. "A lot of historians will breathe easier after we're gone, because the witnesses and participants of history are not wanted by people who write history. History is more confident the farther it gets away from the event."
Flaszen, it seems clear, is trying not only to reinsert himself into the history of Jerzy Grotowski, but into that of Poland as well.

It will be an uphill battle. Grotowski left Poland after martial law was declared in 1981, heading first to Haiti and Rome and then to the United States before finally setting up a permanent base in Italy. The director did return a couple of times to Poland, but the visits were brief, and—as Flaszen notes—"always incognito." After Grotowski died, it became known that he had designated Richards, an American, and Mario Biagini, the Italian actor and associate director of the Pontedera Workcenter, as his designated heirs. For all intents and purposes, the director had turned his back on his homeland.
In a certain sense, Grotowski had rejected his heritage long before that. By the time he left Poland, Grotowski had already brought to a close—and more or less dismissed—his "paratheatrical" stage (the semi-ritualistic, participatory events, famously described by Andre Gregory in the film My Dinner with Andre, that Grotowski oversaw in the Polish forest outside Wroclaw); he was moving into the "theatre of sources" phase, in which he tried to locate theatrical/anthropologic examples of Jung's archetypes—rituals and performances that could represent the notion of a collective unconscious. He had also embarked upon a simultaneously spiritualized and authoritarian approach to the work. Fed up with theatre, he had begun to explore more completely the intersection between performance and religion.
Grotowski made it clear that he was not religious in the traditional sense of the word. Still, there was an ascetic quality to Grotowski's post-theatrical persona, exemplified by the physical shift that took place around 1970. Gone was the chubby, chain-smoking, dark-haired dude in a black suit and Ray-Bans; he had been replaced by a gaunt, monastic figure in flowing cotton and sandals, with long hair and a scraggly beard.
And though Grotowski remained suspicious of organized religion, he read about it voraciously and dabbled in performative aspects of ritual and the occult, ultimately finding a synergy between theatre and faith, even if it was only in the fact that both were on their way out. ("The theatre and the church are dying," he declared in 1970. "Although the two phenomena are very different, in spite of some affinities, I feel that in both of them something is drawing to an end.")
This spiritual aspect of Grotowski's work and persona has, for many years, been the focus of pointed critical attention. Clearly, it was part of the image he cultivated. It was not for nothing that the critic Jan Kott referred to Grotowski as a guru and noted that he always had a copy of Martin Buber's Tales of the Hasidim with him.
"It is religious," says Flaszen of his late colleague's worldview, "but it is without sacrament. It is about how not to be a slave to your conditions. It's not to escape reality, but to face it.
"Now," he adds, "the mystery can be shown."
Flaszen's relationship with Grotowski dates back to the mid-1950s in Kraków, where the latter was finishing up his studies at the State Theatre School. (Grotowski had gotten in by the skin of his teeth, virtually failing the performance portion of the entrance exam but acing the written essay, which addressed the question, "How can theatre contribute to the development of socialism in Poland?") Flaszen, meanwhile, had been a theatre critic and literary director of the Slowacki Theatre in Kraków. But he had lost his job, thanks to his open criticism of the government.
"In '56 there was strong opposition against the regime and against totalitarianism," Flaszen remembers. "I was the author of a pamphlet against the official culture in theatre. So, I became an outsider, a fighter against the regime. And Kraków was not my place anymore."
The '50s-era government of Władysław Gomułka was a peculiar (and very Polish) mixture of Soviet autocratic rule, Polish nationalism and vaguely liberal cultural and economic tendencies. In art, this meant a kind of constant schizophrenia: While it was officially difficult to escape the constraints of Socialist Realism, the spirit of the Polish romantic poets was never far away. And there was a grand tradition of the Polish avant-garde, exemplified by the work and theories of writers like Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.
"We were watching the beginning of the new theatre in Poland," says Flaszen. "In the period of Socialist Realism, theatre was seen as something heretic, forbidden, because it was such an autonomic art."
And its artistic ambitions were not limited to the main urban centers of Warsaw and Kraków. In early 1959, authorities in the southern city of Opole approached Flaszen to see if he was interested in taking over a small, new experimental venue called the Theatre of Thirteen Rows.
"The name was very suspicious," says Flaszen. "I told them I was indeed interested, but they needed a theatre practitioner. And I suggested Grotowski."
Flaszen knew of Grotowski mostly through his work at the theatre school. ("I was friend of his professors at the theatre academy—they wanted to drink vodka with me because I was a very serious critic.") The fact that he suggested Grotowski for the job might seem surprising, as Flaszen had recently given the young director a less-than-enthusiastic, sarcasm-laced review for a production of Uncle Vanya. "There was a risk, because people believed that he was untalented," says Flaszen. "They thought he was an erudite."
That being the case, Opole was a perfect venue for Grotowski—here the studious director would have none of the pressures of Kraków. Grotowski and Flaszen negotiated a fine financial arrangement from the Opole People's Council, and a promise of complete artistic autonomy from the city fathers in the bargain. Off the cultural radar, financially supported and with little pressure to produce traditional theatrical fare, Grotowski was free to embark on a variety of experiments, including the development of what eventually became famously known as "poor theatre."

Theories come out of practice, so it shouldn't be surprising that a notion of "poor theatre" would emerge from Poland after the Second World War. The war had devastated the country; more than five million Poles (three million of them Jews) had been killed. Most of the larger, urban areas had been leveled either by the Nazis (during such offensives as the Warsaw Uprising) or by the Soviets. After the war, the Allies betrayed the country at Yalta. And the subsequent Stalinist attempt at collectivization in Poland was such a complete economic disaster that it was actually abandoned in the mid-1950s—something unheard of in the Eastern Bloc. There were labor disputes and shortages of basic goods and services.
In Opole, while Grotowski focused on the play selection and actor training, Flaszen took over the position of literary director ("an absurd title, as our theatre was not supposed to be a theatre of words," he recollects with a laugh). "We decided to work together in secret revolt," as Flaszen puts it. "We were underground—before the revolution. We were conspirators. Of course, I'm being a little ironic. But, in fact, we did have the ambition to make a revolution in the theatre."
One of the cagier moves on the collaborators' part was to create the notion of a Laboratory Theatre (which is the name the group assumed when it left Opole for the larger, more Germanic city of Wroclaw in 1965). The idea of turning art into a scientific exploration—something conducted in a laboratory, not in a studio—fit nicely with the 1950s Cold War-era interpretation of Marx. (After all, historical materialism was supposedly scientific.) Since his theatre pieces were constantly in development, Grotowski was able to deftly avoid the kind of state censorship that other Polish artists inevitably had to contend with.
"This was the political genius of Grotowski," Flaszen avows. "The Laboratory Theatre was a country in a country. It was independent. It was like a small kingdom—like Monte Carlo. It was totally autonomous, because it was a laboratory."
Even when the Polish authorities watched a performance, the level of metaphorical content was such that it was often unclear whether that they knew what they were really looking at.
"In Grotowski's performances and in our thinking about the theatre, there were many political elements," Flaszen clarifies. "If you take The Constant Prince: The presentation of the royal court in that play was a nomenclature of the communist government. For example, the court kills the prince. But afterwards, they cry. It's like Stalinism after Krushchev. But the commentary was not clear—it was better presented as a mystical theme. Yet it was in fact an art play about independence of the individual under state oppression."
The historical and political circumstances surrounding the creation of Grotowski's art—and critiques of those circumstances—were never too far away from the work, via representations of political torture in Pedro Calderón de la Barca's The Constant Prince and Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, or the manifestation of Auschwitz's ovens (located only 60 miles away from Opole) in Stanisław Wyspianski's poetic nationalist text Akropolis.
It had been less than a decade earlier that Grotowski had embarked on what one critic referred to as "a short but tempestuous adventure" of political activism, joining the Central Committee of Socialist Youth Movement and founding an academic outreach of the Union of Soviet Youth. He even went as far as to write at the time: "We want an organization that will teach people to think politically, to understand their interests, to fight for bread and democracy and for justice and truth in everyday life. We must fight for people to live like humans and to be masters of their fate."
For his efforts, Grotowski was brought before the Kraków authorities to explain his political activities. By all accounts, the questioning did not go well, though the authorities released him with a warning. He would later be dismissive of this period of his life ("I was so fascinated by Gandhi that I wanted to be him"), but the lesson of the cost of forthrightness was not lost on Grotowski; from then on, the director's viewpoints on Poland and her politics would be couched in metaphor, performance and poetry.
"Of course the performances were political," Flaszen confirms, "but we never talked about this. For him, real politics was the basis for personal liberation. It was a little Gnostic—it was about how to be free from politics but at the same time not escape from it. It was a spirit of fighting for the freedom of a single human being.
"Grotowski's passion was to know how to be alone," he adds, "how not to be an institutional man, a man of the masses. How not to follow of religion or ideology. But also not to lose the warmth of human community—even while being alone. That is a revolution without end. It is a process. And it never ends."
Now, as our hour-and-a-half interview wraps up, the tea Flaszen set aside is cold, and the current director of the Grotowski Institute, a robust young director named Jarosław Fret, helps the older man on with his coat. Fret treats Flaszen with deference and respect; it's an acknowledgement that the Institute, the "year of Grotowski" and perhaps even a big part of Polish theatre as we know it would not be in existence if it weren't for Flaszen's decision 50 years ago to establish a partnership with a young, bookish theatre director in a provincial Polish town.
"I'm very interested in what would have been if I hadn't met Grotowski—and where I would have been?" Flaszen wonders out loud as he wraps a natty yellow scarf around his neck. "When I am on the other side, I hope that Grotowski and I will speak of this.
"But," he adds, "I'm not in a hurry."
Stephen Nunns is the director of the graduate acting program at Towson University in Baltimore, Md., and a former staff writer for this magazin

Lying and Creativity

2009-12-04T11:28:00.002-08:00

Lying and Creativity

This post on Confabulation really hit home for me.

As an acting teacher, the need for actors to inhibit inhibition is primary. Acting is in many ways confabulation. The actor must believe fully in her "lie" and be able to repress her own personal "reality" in order to reveal a deeper "truth." We train bodies and voices relentlessly in order to allow the expression of these confabulations to emerge. As Ian said, the artist must be both expert and child.

While in the past, acting was considered to be interpretative rather than creative, we now have a different understanding and different training methods. This new idea probably emerged with the advent of film and television. The public simply wouldn't accept the presentational approaches used over the centuries. The close-up dictated a new more penetrating way of watching actors.

There is a stronger need therefore, for the actor not to be seen "lying." The need for "personalization" becomes more important than "characterization" as a goal.

For this to happen, the actor must be able to marry script with improvisation, the formal with the impulsive, in the same way the jazz musician acknowledges the main score and creates around and in response to it.

Oddly enough, as this more personal approach grows deeper, the meanings of the work become more universal.

Evolution/religion: an Integrative View of Nature, Faith and the Human Mind

2009-11-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

Evolution/religion: an Integrative View of Nature, Faith and the Human Mind

November 29th, 2009 by Admin Leave a reply » Evolution/Religion

An Integrative Look at Nature, Faith and the Human Mind

By Robert DePaolo

Freud once described history as a series of race wars, implying that bigotry is and always has been tantamount to a non-malleable virus infecting all of human society

It is a debatable point. Detractors might say mankind can and typically has learned his way out of racial bias as a result of exposure to, interaction with, and dependence on people of other races. For example in recent times the population of blacks and other racial minorities has increased in western nations, providing support in war and industry and enhancing the national spirit in the arts, athletics and literature.

On the other hand, adherents might contend that built into the human genetic code is an equally non-malleable tendency to protect and preserve the local gene pool, and that stranger-hostility is quite characteristic of all primate groups – including homo sapiens.

Some studies seem to support that view, in particular the work of Wilson & Wrangham, (2003). Their results coincide with a main tenet of evolutionary psychology that primitive behaviors devoted to gene pool preservation will take priority over the egalitarian philosophy framing the rules of social interaction in most democratic societies.

In terms of human experience, “strangeness” does not have to be based on race. It can be based on language differences, ethnic background, gender and any number of real and superficial distinctions. It’s just that the physical differences among races makes the process of discriminating between “us” and “them” rather perceptually and emotionally convenient.

Even with distinctive racial traits, “stranger bias” is hardly inevitable. It seems to be merely one of two options provided by the human brain. As Perry, (2008) and Cromwell & Schultz (2003) have suggested, the sheer size of the brain, particularly in the vast regions of the cerebral cortex (a section less influenced by primal urges and more concerned with learning and integrating new associations and concepts) provides a check and balance on our most basal instincts. Indeed Freud’s theory regarding the separation of the ego from the id for impulse control might have its physiological correlate in the frontal cortex.

In that context perhaps, despite Freud, it is not race, but the human capacity to over-distinguish between objects and persons that comprises the true sociopolitical virus. In truth that process, often referred to as discrimination learning, is more of a two sided coin than a virus because when it comes to drawing distinctions, that component of mind can employed for better or for worse; for example to chart the course of history, politics and scientific discovery, leading either to progress or social devolution.

That all good and bad, productive and destructive elements in society emanate from the human mind is a tautology requiring no further elaboration. On the other hand the way in which the human mind works does invite scrutiny, because the mind/brain is a flexible structure by virtue of its genetic and functional make-up, which can lead to any number of behavioral and attitudinal possibilities. In fact, as Mercado (2008) has suggested, the human brain appears to be a kind of bimodal organ constantly shifting between discriminatory and integrative cognitive processes.

Since human brain evolution occurred in the context of an arboreal lifestyle requiring integrative perception, a capacity for figure-ground (stereoscopic) visual distinctions and internal memory to correct for visual and acoustical vagaries in the trees, it tends to bring ideas together into common focus. In that sense the primate brain template provided us with a penchant for integrative thought. On the other hand the latest primate brain revision providing new circuits to facilitate upright walking seems to have led to a bifurcated human mind, featuring a left-right motor cadence requiring separate inhibition-excitation sequences. This process was converted to other functions and led to an enhancement of discrimination and attention capacities. While all creatures can learn to distinguish between stimuli, the finely tuned alternating/competing capacities to separate and integrate experiences appears to play a significant role in th development of both the personality and human culture.

One can see the bimodal mind in action in virtually all human endeavors. For example the ability to put circuit A on hold while circuit B is activated enables the Eskimo not only to walk upright but to describe 12 different kinds of snow. Meanwhile the fact that humans can weave experiences together enables the rest of us to understand that snow consists of one chemically configuration and is simply water at a different state of temperature.

Thus we seem to shift back and forth between convergence and divergence in our actions, thoughts, beliefs and prayers and perhaps the course of human history is partly determined by which of those two trends is emphasized and championed by society at any given time.

It clearly has played a role in American politics. For example the evolution of the political parties has been part real and part illusory – the need for group distinctions often overriding the practicalities of “the party philosophy.” Despite its origin in Jefferson’s democratic-republican party, which favored agriculture over industry and (as evidenced in Jefferson’s letters on moral principles) held to the possibility that agnosticism and morality were not mutually exclusive, the current Republican party has adopted a fairly vigorous religious mindset and champions the cause of industry. Meanwhile Democrats…Dixiecrats, who in earlier times became a collective albatross around the neck of voting rights now claim to be the only party truly sensitive to the plight of minorities. The fact that the members of both parties compete fervently during elections based on ostensibly clear choices in policy and legacy seems to indicate that discriminatory thought for its own sake has prevailed in recent times.

If unnecessary group distinctions have proved to be a mild impediment to the evolution of American society (as accurately predicted by James Madison and Voltaire) such artificial distinctions have been insidious among the so-called major religions.

Depending one what mind-mode is in play, one could assert either that there are no meaningful distinctions among the beliefs of Jews, Christians and Moslems – making several thousand years of hostility seem unnecessary, not to mention foolish, or that the contrasts are so substantial that disputes over territory and doctrine would have been unavoidable in any case.

The integrative part of mind might angle in on the fact that the three faiths have virtually identical moral premises. For example in reading the Bible and the Qur’an one could conclude that the Ten Commandments are a staple of all three religions. While the Christian and Jewish interpretations involve slightly different wording, all ten laws are morally and functionally identical in both instances. For example the first item in both interpretations refers to placing “No Other God Before Me.” Interestingly both the Christian and Judaic versions, derived from Exodus and Deuteronomy, allude to the fact that loyalty is God’s due for having “brought the people out of the land of Egypt.” The individuals involved in that episode; Moses, Aaron et al. were of course thoroughly Hebrew, and despite their resentment-fueled drift toward pagan worship in the desert, they had no real interest in modifying the Jewish faith, as had Jesus.

Yet over time a common belief system and way of life gave way to the distinction-seeking circuits, leading to persecution of Jews who despite having different rituals, held essentially the same beliefs as the Christians who persecuted them.

The one salient distinction between Judaism and Christianity was of course Jesus’ claim to be God (if indeed that was his claim) which most Jews during the Common Era would have considered blasphemous. Yet even that distinction is somewhat dubious, since Jesus often alluded to prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah as being in effect, his role models. He pointed out that they too had ascended into heaven, were reborn, and transcended the usual limits of mortality. During the Common Era most Jews held similar views of the higher prophets – and certainly of David.

Even more interesting, in light of the mind’s propensity for integrating and discriminating, are the similarities between Islam and the Judeo-Christian ethic. It is commonly known that the Islamic prophets are, by and large, the same men and women worshipped by Jews and Christians. For example Moslems adhere to the words and deeds of Abraham – whom they call “Ibrahim.” They consider Jesus, whom they call “Eisa al-Masseh” a prophet. They honor the legacies of Moses, whom they call “Musa,” Noah, whom they call “Nuh”, and Isaac, whom they call “Ishak,” and they seem to hold Mary, the mother of Jesus (Maryam in Arabic) in even higher regard than either Christians or Jews.

Despite no direct allusion to the Ten Commandments in the Qur’an Moslems also adhere to the Decalogue, albeit with a few minor revisions. For instance, in “Al-Israa” (The Night Journey) The Qur’an (47:19) states: “There is no other god beside God.” In 14:35 it says: “My Lord, make this a peaceful land and protect me and my children from worshipping idols.” There are also references to not taking the Lord’s name in vain, adhering to the Sabath (though on Friday), honoring one’s parents, abstaining from adultery, murder and theft and from coveting thy neighbor’s wife and bearing false witness.

One possible distinction between the Bible and the Qur’an might be seen in a slightly different wording of one of the commandments. While the Old Testament says: “thou shalt not kill” the Qur’an says in 17: 33: “Do not kill unjustly.”

Could this subtle difference justify the current nihilistic mindset of Islamic extremists intent for so long on exterminating Israelis and infidels in the west? It seems unlikely, especially since some Biblical scholars maintain that in the Old Testament a similar distinction between murdering and killing is implied as well – the argument being that Jews also believed it was occasionally necessary to kill for purposes of self defense and tribal preservation.

With that in mind perhaps history is less a function of time and place than of mind. The Crusades, the current conflict in the Middle East, the war on terror merely a series of plays in the theater of life, staged not by the actors, as Shakespeare maintained, but by a calcium, protein, myelin, water and information containing vessel known as the human brain, during times when the discriminatory aspect of mind took center stage.

A Thousand Years Later…

While the conflict among Christians, Jews and Moslems has continued in modern times we also have an increasingly contentious dispute between proponents of evolution and people of faith. Once again, the question could be asked as to whether this is a real or anthropocentric distinction, and whether, as with The Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an, the similarities outweigh the differences.

I would like to suggest such a possibility, and do so by drawing comparisons between the Decalogue, Al-Israa and the theory of natural selection.

One integrative idea is that the biological mandate revolving around the survival of both the individual and the group, seems to be in agreement with the laws inherent in these religious texts. In order to understand how merely requires a narrowing down and re-categorizating of the commandments into two main bio-moral laws. One espousing altruistic (social, survival enhancing) behaviors or restraints, the other devoted to creating a hierarchical, regulatory structure by which these behaviors and restraints can be prompted and governed over the course of time.

To elaborate; group survival, and by inference, protection of the local gene pool, require cohesion among members. The same cooperative behaviors observed in a pack of lionesses and wolves that enhance survival are also beneficial to human beings. With laws prohibiting theft, murder, adultery and coveting, interpersonal conflict is ameliorated, thus enhancing group cohesion. That dynamic leads to a stronger esprit de corps among members, giving impetus to behaviors that provide for the strong and give shelter to the weak, especially with regard to the protection and care off offspring.

In a bio-moral sense, the Bible and Qur’an are ingenious texts, particularly with respect to one characteristic that typifies all primate groups – the alpha male/female phenomenon. While dominance is often viewed as a bad thing – particularly by those living in a democratic society, it actually works in the primate world. Dominant males protect the members of the group and maintain order by issuing unilateral decisions which are the final word on conflict resolution. The reason this works is based on information dynamics. If all members of a group had equal status and conflict arose, say over territory, there would be no foundation by which to alleviate the conflict other than by mutual destruction. Genetically speaking, that would be an unfortunate trend. Since each member would presume to have equal claim to the territory the only possible endpoint would be a bloody victory by one party over another.

Interestingly, the way this might play out is by one member lining up more supporters than his rivals, thus giving him a numbers advantage in the course of battle. At the point where he emerged victorious, the fact that he had many followers would make him by

definition, a leader – thus setting up a hierarchy in any event. Consequently, in the primate world and perhaps in the mammalian world per se, hierarchies not only work but are perhaps an inevitable by product of socio-mathematics

The problem with humans is that while we also tend toward hierarchies (witness our worship of movie stars, athletes and musicians) we also have a more egalitarian outlook that is perhaps itself a byproduct of human evolution. It results from the fact that our large brains can conjure up so many tools, inventions, artistic configurations and ideas that no single alpha male or female can be sufficient. Thus our species seems to require many alphas.

That creates a potential moral dilemma. Specifically, if power is compartmentalized so that certain individuals protect us from certain hazards but not others – for example a police officer vs. a heart surgeon – there is no overriding arbiter to protect us from broader existential problems or problems that no single person can solve. Beyond that, the powerful can themselves conflict, such that a Brutus can assassinate a Caesar. In such circumstances who then has absolute, overriding authority? Who can decide on matters of conflict and prescribe behaviors and values for all, amidst this broad dispersion of power? Even if abstract laws become the objective solution, there would have to be someone to create and enforce those laws. In other words the combination of inevitable social conflict and the survival-based need for social equanimity in complex human society would perhaps invariably require a transcendent “referee.”

Thus carried to its logical endpoint, the evolution of the human brain from a hierarchy-based and less egalitarian primate brain would inexorably lead to a belief in and need for God.

At face value this conclusion might upset both religious adherents and atheists: the former because it takes God from the spiritual to the bio-natural domain, the latter because it suggests we will never reach a point in our social evolution where we can abandon a belief in some type of God.

Actually neither group need fret over this set of possibilities. First, because it is impossible to know whether natural selection runs contrary to God’s plan or whether perhaps God, in his wisdom has simply given us laws that coincide with the nature He also created which happen to favor survival of the only species capable of religious thought. To suggest there is an inherent incongruence between the idea of a God and the theory of natural selection would be to suggest that God wants us to act in ways that don’t coincide with a world He himself created.

As for the atheists, perhaps nature is all there is. Yet even if that were true, nature would require a lawful foundation, a grounding point by which matter and energy could have formed within the hot, formless plasma known as the cosmic egg. In other words whether or not one believes in a creator, it is difficult to conceive of a universe that began or transitioned from the size of a pin to its current expanse not undergoing some sort of creation process. Even if God doesn’t exist in quite human form, a tenet to which many religions (including arguably Christianity – which views God as a triad consisting of at least two ethereal beings) have always adhered. Does that mean that some overriding regulatory, creative alpha-component (say for example a superstring or particle constant that one day might be called the “El” particle) doesn’t exist and cannot work its wonders by transcending the rest of nature? I suppose it would depend on which part of our brain was in play at any given point in time.

REFERENCES

Cromwell, & Schultz (2003) Effects of Expectations for Differential Reward Magnitude

on Neuronal Activity in Primate Striatum. Journal of Neurophysiology 89: 2823-2838

Freud, S. (1960) The Einstein-Freud Correspondence; From; Einstein on Peace O.H Nathan & H, Norden (ed) New York; Schocken Books 186-203.

Jefferson’s Religious Beliefs, Research and Collections, Montecello Research Dept. Aug 2007

Mercado, E (2008) Neural and Cognitive Plasticity: From Maps to Minds. Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 134, No. 1 109-137.

Perry, B. (2008) Aggression and Violence: The Neurology of Experience. Scholastic.com 1-2.

Qur’an: 47:19

Qur’an: 14:35

Qur’an: 17:33

Wilson, M. & R. Wrangham. (2003) Inter-group Relations in Chimpanzees. American Review of Anthropology 32: 363-392

By: Robert DePaolo

Integral Options Cafe: The Ritual Structure of Change

2009-11-22T11:47:00.000-08:00

Integral Options Cafe: The Ritual Structure of Change

How the brain filters out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information

2009-11-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

How the brain filters out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information

NYT on anxiety and inborn temperament

2009-11-21T14:46:00.001-08:00

NYT on anxiety and inborn temperament

Posted using ShareThis

2009-11-17T08:47:00.003-08:00

Myth, Stanislavski and Mirror Neurons

"Art is the clothing of a revelation." Joseph Campbell.

“Truth in the theatre must be genuine, not glamorized. It must be purged of unnecessary, mundane details. It must be true in a realistic sense but made poetic by creative ideas.” Konstantin Stanislavski

“All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us.”
Joseph Campbell

Abstract: Stanislavski intuited human truths that scientists are still grappling to describe. Recently scientists have begun to prove what Stanislavski discovered without the aids of fMRI machines or advanced chemistry. This paper is an attempt to describe my own wrestling with neuroscience and mythology; ideas to which I believe he would have been attracted, .

As a passionate theatre practitioner, I believe that the most fundamental use of our ancient art form is the reconciliation of humanity with itself, with the gods, and therefore with the natural and metaphysical world. Theatre, for me, is not necessarily what happens in a designated performing space; it occurs whenever an “actor” and an “audience” willingly appear. This coming-together-spilt, this dualism, exists for a certain amount of time, and when it disappears the two parts leave each other altered as a result of the encounter.

The quality of live theatre involves a sensual, nearly fleshly exchange between the spectators and the actors. Whether behind masks as for the ancients, or behind grease paint, or naked-faced, actors exist biologically in the same space as the audience but separate from it. As the brilliant British director and acting theoretician Declan Donnellan says, “A theatre is not only a literal space, but also a place where we dream together; not merely a building but a space that is both imaginative and collective”. (Donnellan, 2006)

This very fact, that audiences and actors encounter dreams in a shared space, means that the perceptions of the audience are capable of actual physical involvement with the play itself. They could, if provoked, storm the stage and take over, or depending on the size of the house, they might be able to grab the apple the actor is eating. Luckily for most actors, the audience is content to watch and vicariously experience eating the apple. Theatre practitioners have always known that the audience is in someway moved and affected by the actions of the characters passing before them. The idea of catharsis implies cleansing, in which tears and laughter are physiological responses. However, there are less obvious responses that we actors and audiences have always been aware of that go beyond these outward shows. Stanislavski, when speaking to actors, remarked on an energy that seemed to pass between people in the following quote.
“. . .Haven’t you ever been aware, in life or onstage, when in communication with other people, of a current emanating from your will flowing through your eyes, your fingertips, your skin? What shall we call this method of communication? Emitting and receiving rays, signals? Radiating out and radiating in? In the absence of an alternative terminology let us stick with these words since they illustrate very clearly the kind of communication I have to talk to you about. In the near future, when this invisible current has been studied by science, a more appropriate terminology will be established.” (Stanislavski, 2008)

In his search to find natural and scientific ways of looking at acting, Stanislavski predicted the findings encountered in a laboratory in Parma, Italy in 1996 by a team of neurophysiologists. This team was studying the brain responses of Macaque monkeys when grasping objects with their hands.

“ . . . the neurophysiologist, Vittorio Gallese was moving around the lab during a lull in the day’s experiment. A monkey was sitting quietly in the chair, waiting for her next assignment. Suddenly, just as Vittorio reached for something--he does not remember what--he heard a burst of activity from the computer that was connected to the electrodes that had been surgically implanted in the monkey’s brain . . .Vittorio immediately thought the reaction was strange. The monkey was just sitting quietly, not intending to grasp anything, yet this neuron affiliated with the grasping action had fired nevertheless.” (Iacoboni, 2008)

What this meant was undeniable; the idea that monkey see, monkey do “virtually” is true. The monkey was observing and experiencing what the researcher was doing and responding to it biologically. These neurons are now referred to as mirror neurons (MNs).
Since this discovery much effort has been put into examining the human implications of this phenomenon. Researchers have recently confirmed that the same neurons exist in people and are spread widely across the brain. (James M. Kilner, 2009) There still exist many questions concerning the limits of MNs. We know that they are closely related physiologically to Broca’s area, the central area for speech production and language understanding in the brain, but we don’t yet know if this positioning has any relevance. Scientists also hypothesize that this system of neurons is responsible for a more complex emotional empathy and recognition of emotional states in others. (Ramachandran, 2007) However, given the simplest understanding of mirror neuronal activity, we can say that while the audience member doesn’t grab the apple, in a sense his body does. The same signals are sent to the same muscles the actor uses to grab the apple. What prevents the audience from charging the stage for the food is a shut-off valve in the spinal cord that knows the difference between virtual and actual. (James M. Kilner, 2009)
Furthermore, these mirror neurons are excited not only by the action, but also by intention. (Ramachandran, 2007) The viewer’s body fires as he observes the intention, before the action is fully completed. Without seeing intention, the viewer remains as passive as the person sitting by the apple or the monkey in the cage; it is only when the actor intends to pick up the apple that the chemically-electrically charged neurons explode. Studies have also shown the likelihood of the same sorts of involuntary brain responses to sounds and primal facial expressions. Once again, the more familiar the action, the more likely it is to light up our circuits.

What all of this indicates is that we as humans respond physiologically to familiar situations that because of their familiarity have the power to engage us on a bio-chemical level. Is this physiological connection to another, this “sparking” of each other as it were, the thing that actors and audiences sense in the air? Of course there are other physiological responses besides actions and intentions that contribute: the thrill of the sounds of language, lights, colors, music; all processed differently in the brain. But neuroscientists are beginning to hypothesize that MNs are the site of emotional empathy and, like the muscular response, the chemical response to another’s pain or pleasure is also “virtually” experienced in the body of the viewer. (Ramachandran, 2007)

With this in mind, the concept of separate selves begins to depart, and a communal experience begins, everyone firing neurons, some more brightly and some less, depending on their world experience. The selves of the audience begin to dissolve and an expansion of possibility begins. (Bulinska, 2007)
In accepting his Oscar, the actor, Forest Whitaker said:
“. . . when I first started acting, it was because of my desire to connect to everyone--to that thing inside each of us. That light that I believe exists in all of us. Because acting for me is about believing in that connection and it's a connection so strong, it's a connection so deep, that we feel it. And through our combined belief, we can create a new reality.” (Biilington, 2007)

The theatre, sport, and religion all become a means for us to re-visit cast off dreams, innate heroic possibilities and other selves that we left behind in childhood; to be re-united with a half-remembered potential if only for a while. The left-behind others about whom I speak, include not only our mourned-for frail other-selves, but all of the strong, single-minded appetites and values on which we might have built alternative lives and identities, the tyrants, the pedants, the seekers of truth, the mischief makers, the athletes, the saints, the hedonists, the builders, the martyrs, the torturers, the dancers, the executioners, the sensualists, the explorers, the madonnas, the gluttons, the criminals, the lovers. They include the lions and tigers and monkeys and snakes and eagles and elephants and coyotes and dogs we could have been.

These qualities of ravenous need and curiosity emerge from our bodies and our survival instincts; however civilization has tamed these potentially harmful impulses. Our bodies continue to experience these desires for action, but our need to remain safe, protects us from anarchy. The MN activity must suffice for us. The archetypes familiar to us from the legends of many cultures are hardwired and given faces in our unconscious world. The names we give to these gods/archetypes/heroes vary depending on issues of geography and economy.

In his search for the underlying principles of mythology, Joseph Campbell agrees with Carl Jung that myth was an outcropping of such dreams; dreams formed involuntarily by the sleeping brain. Campbell’s discovery that the symbols in dreams were universal led to his belief in the collective unconscious.

“Carl Jung describes archetypes as innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be detected in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behaviour.” (Campbell 1972)

An archetype can therefore be understood as the embodiment of a natural power, either animal, human, or some variation therein. As with all power, if the source of the energy is not able to be experienced in a sensory way, it does not appear to be present. We as humans seek ways to envision these emanations through stories and characters wherein the powers collide and intermingle. We need to find a container for these explosions, a human way of envisioning non-embodied energies. For me, these are the archetypes most useful to actors. The stories that emerge are what we refer to as myths. For the power of the myth and its attendant archetypes to be of use to society, rituals are created as needed by a given community to either assuage or contain energies that might destroy the group if left to their own devices. Mircea Eliade’s main concept is that ritual is a way for a given society to move safely from one disruption of the group’s wholeness to another. (Eliade,1963)

Religion and theatre provide spaces for a communal unification to happen in an actual and a metaphoric way. Both are ways to connect physically, intellectually, and emotionally with our culturally defined archetypes alongside other equally disconnected humans. The rituals performed by the actors and priests with their music, movement, and words serve to unite us with the powerful symbols of our archetypes, and aid in acceptance of the helpful and rejection of the hurtful. The rituals repeat symbolically the old stories, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. Often the metaphor is lost to the participant, but there is still comfort in its very being, because the meaning takes place in his musculature. The MNs fire, the images impress, the music is heard.

If we see the ritual as a journey from one point to another wherein a human being/hero confronts powers that are externalized in the ritual through symbols as well as other beings, both human and quasi-human, it becomes apparent that a play is a ritual for the audience whether sought as such or not. Joseph Campbell has codified this transformation as “The Hero’s Journey.”
Both theatre and religion repeat the old stories; that is a major part of their ritual function, but only the theatre intends to irritate us with new questions about the old stories. Even when it has no political or sociological ax to grind, its function, besides ritual, is that of investigation into what makes us human and how to interpret the world around us.

The actors, who are already initiated into the mystery of the play, must lead the audience through this ritual terrain. As the audience views the journey, their mirror neurons and entire sensory system must become so excited through the actor’s actions in these confrontations that they are re-united with themselves and altered in some way. They must be taken to a place of unity. James Joyce’s concept that the spectator must be arrested, must lose a sense of self in the presence of “proper art,” is an attempt to describe this phenomenon. (Joyce, 1916)
There are a finite number of stories. I am aware that there are only thirty-six plots, or twelve, or four depending on your reference. (Polti, 1917, McKee, 1997) If one also understands that there are only six or seven essential relationships based in kinship and community, one can easily see that (given some arithmetic beyond my capabilities) all the new scripts are simply eternal themes and heroes dressed in contemporary clothing.

As a trainer of actors, this brings up many questions.
(1) How can we best enable actors to take the audience along with them on the journey of the play?
(2) How can we enable actors to discover the powers within themselves necessary to work on an embodied level of such strength and commitment to primal action that not only their fellow actors, but also their viewers will be moved on a biological level?

(3) How can we best provoke our actors to move beyond the temporal trappings of the story to find the power of the myth beneath?

It goes without saying that such actors must be vocally and physically flexible, strong and imaginative within those systems. However, we frequently neglect to create actors who are large enough imaginatively, intellectually, and spiritually to take on such a task. In fact, we have conflated the idea that an actor “shouldn’t be in his head” with a rejection of the need for curiosity and intellectual exploration. How can we re-awaken ourselves, and our students in order to re-examine what we mean by the word Theatre?

In my attempt to find a way to a theatre that matters on a universal level, peopled by actors whose work is selfless and inspiring, I have greedily searched the works of any serious writer who addresses myth, ritual, philosophy, acting, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and anthropology. Among these are Joseph Campbell, Karen Armstrong, Richard Schechner, Leonard Shlain, Ernest Becker, Jerzy Grotowski, Antonin Artaud, Declan Donnellan, Victor Turner, Karen Armstrong, Konstantin Stanislavski, Carl Jung, Francisco Varela, Antonio Damasio, Marco Iacoboni, Evan Thompson, Bill Ball, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Michael Gazzaniga and many, many others.

My hypothesis is that our mirror neurons are more excited by intentions that are corporeal, primal, and emotionally imbued. We have a good deal of evidence that MNs respond to emotional states and for me the purest forms of these emotionally charged actions are contained in myth, archetype, and ritual.

In order to test this idea I decided to begin at the beginning and attempt to discover how this might work for actors. If the world begins in chaos, if human development is an attempt to tame wildness both within and without, it seemed appropriate to thrust my students into chaos. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly's flow theory of creativity and learning suggests that the process of learning proceeds from frustration to mastery to boredom and thence onto further frustration. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) Frustration from this point of view can be seen as chaos and so, at the top of the syllabus for this class, I include the following:
The flow of learning proceeds from frustration to mastery to boredom and back to frustration in a continual upward moving spiral encompassing greater and greater circumference. Frustration therefore is to be desired and mastery should be considered a transitory state. The circumference encircles more and more of the world of ideas and spiritual understandings in the dance of consciousness. Welcome! (Brody 2005)

I challenge myself to allow this frustration, even when it results in complaint, confusion, pouting, and general grumpiness amongst the acting students. My objective is to provoke the aspiring artists to rely on each other and their own ingenuity to create whatever pieces they are working on.

In order to prepare them for what is coming in the first and most important quarter of this year-long acting class, all students are notified during the summer that they are expected to read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Campbell) and Peter Pan (Barrie). I strongly encourage them to attempt Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (Becker) as well. While many academics may find this easy reading, it is not considered so by the actors, it is frustrating. By being forced to grapple with material that seems to be just out of their reach, they come into the first quarter excited and popping with ideas and questions.

We spend the first several weeks simply discussing mythology, heroes, archetypes, Freud, religion, symbols, as well as the ways in which dramatic structures do or do not follow the hero’s journey as delineated by Campbell. I contribute data from neuroscience, biology, psychology, and anthropology using articles and readings concerning memory formation, image creation, and mirror neurons. We investigate the differences between female and male journeys and debate whether these journeys were a result of biological determinism or social constructs. And of course, Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, Christ, Buddha, and others begin to enter our conversations. My focus during this time is to challenge their imaginations, to expand their view of themselves as intellectual beings, and to begin to create a synthesis between practical acting work, neuroscience, and universal ideas. The actors begin to feel proud of themselves for tackling such supposedly difficult topics, they begin to look for more answers, some branching out into different inquiries. One student who had broken away from a fundamentalist black church decided to investigate the idea of ecstatic states as revealed in talking in tongues. Another became fascinated with the ideas of sex and death. It is not uncommon for the students to read Mirroring People by Marco Iacoboni, return to the The Denial of Death, read widely in more widely in philosophy and mythology. Some become genealogists.

The first assignment of the quarter is to create a seven-minute solo performance piece using as many theatrical forms as possible, music, dancing, mimicry, simple props, costume, and spatial placements. The actors are instructed that the story must be told theatrically, not as a direct narrative, and that whatever the story is, it needs to be seen as one of the stops in a hero’s journey. It has to be based on a family legend using their own grandparents or other ancestors. It involves examining how such stories become a part of family lore, how they shift and change through retelling, how the actual event becomes lost in the elevation of its meaning, and how the ancestor becomes a representative of a family archetype. In addition to challenging/frustrating the actors, my objective is for the actors to understand on a personal level how myths and archetypes, that heretofore have seemed a distant, dead idea lodged in the Greek Pantheon, are ever-present in our lives.

These small pieces are usually interesting glimpses into the actors and their processes. They create a wonderful teaching opportunity to discuss structure, clarity, physical and vocal flexibility, importance of specific choices, and ways in which conflict is necessary for growth. The only critique given involves whether the actor did or did not communicate what they intended. The class is asked to examine whether they felt involved biologically/neuronally/emotionally or whether their attention had wandered. Were they aware of subtle physiological changes in their own bodies? I avoid speaking about the piece myself, preferring to wait until the other students in the class speak about the work. The performer was not allowed to verbalize until after his classmates had tried to wrangle out the meaning amongst themselves of what they just witnessed. This discussion allows the performer to hear what the audience saw and felt without defending or explaining the work. He or she begins to understand the necessity for fulfilled, intended gestures both psychological and physical, and for the absolute requirement of a clean demarcation of events. The performers also begin to develop a healthy respect for the audience’s attempt to attach meaning to whatever movement, prop, costume, or set piece is on the stage.

We do not repeat these pieces because I don’t want them to take on too much importance for the actors. They are etudes where hopefully learning takes place for both viewer and actor without the pressure of judgmental evaluation. They are ways for the actor to begin to contemplate his or her part in a large story.

From here we move on to Peter Pan. (Barrie, 1992) The reason for using this supposed child’s story is to employ the range of archetypal characters, to play with the idea of dreamscapes, and to examine the concept that the basis of all relationships are grounded in the conflict between order (Wendy) and chaos (Peter). Within Peter Pan we examine the significance of earth versus sky, water versus land, inside versus outside, male versus female, natural versus civilized, child versus adult, animal versus human, and many, many other binary ideas. At this time, I usually introduce Babylonian creation stories, androgynous gods, Jungian ideas of anima and animus and dream symbolism.

My challenge to the class is to create and enact one scene from Peter Pan in twenty minutes with whatever props or attire is present in the studio. (I usually sprinkle the room with things for them to find, scraps of material, bags, canes, balls, ropes, nets, old costumes and so forth). I leave the room and go to my office. (By some report, this twenty minutes is probably the most frustrating of all for the students). What on earth do I want them to do? What am I looking for? How could they do this well? When I return, the actors have for the most part given up the desire to please me. They have decided to simply present their story, and have formed a pact to do whatever is necessary for this bizarre assignment. However, they are also excited and turned on by the group’s creation. Once again, my aim in this exercise is to reawaken a spirit of play with the pressure of time serving to necessitate structure. They present their muddled but passionate rendition of the story, and after praising the attempt, I ask questions of intent and meaning. What did they want me to see, or understand, or feel? What powers/archetypes are present in the scene? What rituals? How did they process what the others were doing? Might the archetypes in the scene be clearer, fuller, more primal? Who exactly are the mermaids? Who are the pirates? What is the water? What is the boat? How is this related to dreams? It takes a bit of probing and encouraging, but sooner or later, their imaginations begin to bring forth better and more interesting ideas. (Ball, 1984) As soon as I sense excitement and desire to do the scene again, I absent myself once more, giving them thirty minutes to work on the project. And so it goes. The work becomes deeper, less clever, and cleaner as the actors search for better ways of telling the story. Participation in the group becomes stronger and the desire to create theatre can be palpable. The actors begin experimenting with stereotypes and more meaningful archetypes, they include more dancing and singing and the presentation becomes less predictable.

The next class is an attempt to tell the entire Peter Pan story without the script. For this to happen, we use a titled scenario list, which I have created based on the scenes in the play. I e-mailed it to them separately the evening before and it is either written on the blackboard or near at hand in the room. I give them an hour to work out whatever they deem necessary and return to view their attempt. These scenes are never graded or appraised as products; they are a means of embracing chaos, impulse, instinct, feeling in the dark, jumping off cliffs, and a certain kind of sloppiness. It might be said that this recklessness encourages failure, but when success is not an aim, failure is not a possible result.

By this time in the quarter, the actors are generally having a wonderful time, but are beginning to feel confused. What is the result of our work going to be, is our time being well used, shouldn’t we be memorizing lines and blocking yet? It is a delicate time for all of us. For me it is a leap of faith. I have to trust that my theory is somehow correct, and they have to bear the frustration of open-ended work.

It is at this time that we move toward scripted scenes as delicately as possible. We begin a process scenes that has been given the name SuperScenes by my students. A SuperScene reveals the primal energies, archetypes, and essential conflicts that underlie any scene. It is an attempt to investigate the scene beyond its temporal elements, beyond the "characterized" elements and plot-based ideas, and into the universal questions, energies, conflicts, and archetypes that are the original patterns for all scenes.
As V.S. Ramachadran says, “Art involves distortion, hyperbole and exaggeration... A specific type of distortion... Sanscrit word rasa, the spirit of something, the soul of something, capturing the very essence to evoke a specific emotion in the viewers brain.”(Ramachandran, 2001)

They have all read and discussed Angels In America, Part Two: Perestroika (Kushner, 1992) not only for this class, but in their history and criticism class. The territory has been covered, so the actors feel a bit more settled. The scenes I choose to use are are Prior’s first confrontation with the Angel, the subsequent conversation with Belize, and the angel committee scene in act four, scene five. All members of the class are involved.

The angel committee scene is especially ornery and in the preface to one of the three published versions of the play. But it offers the ability to work as a quasi-chorus, to experiment with archetypes, and to move beyond literalism and into metaphor. Who are these angels? What is this scene about? Where is it set? What is at stake? Kushner offers few hints, but as a poet, the clues he leaves are creatively rich.
The work now turns from entirely improvisational to textual. The actors use the lines of the script, although during the early days of these explorations they are allowed to riff into song or quotation if the desire arises. The rest is up to their imaginations; they are responsible for deciding upon the archetypes and how they will enact them. They decide where the scene takes place. They are encouraged to fully enact any metaphor that emerges. They are not required to pick up lines, to interpret lines, to fulfill any blocking. They are required only to play.

As usual, the first several attempts are rather formless, stabs in the dark, lots of mugging, un-needed movement and difficulty finding something “to play.” But one by one, each actor finds an archetype with which they feel comfortable and which more or less gets at the deeper meaning of the role itself. In the latest incarnation of this, one of the actors became a Super Handyman because he had to deal with the radio so frequently, another who found the language of his role dense but un-emotional became a Mathematician/Scientist, one of the women became Cassandra, and another, an Orphan adrift. One of the actors began as a Gorilla and another, a Crabby Old Man Critic. As the scene progressed, they began to discover which of the other actors seemed to be on their side in the arguments. They started bringing in objects, hand props, costumes, and other items to help in the work.

As entertaining for all of us as this was, few of them were affected by it beyond some rather generalized emotion. They ran at the scene, tried to knock it down to size, and were always less than happy with the result. Finally, in one of their rehearsals, they decided that the radio and its emanations was the problem. No one was able to fully invest it with much meaning. So they asked their fellow actor who had been reading offstage to come onstage and become the radio. The stage, which heretofore had been a rather nebulous space, transmogrified into a sort of lifeboat, with everyone waiting to hear the news of possible rescue. All actors became intently focused on the Radio/Man who proceeded to choke and return to life and again fight for breath. As the Radio/Man sputtered, the Handyman became a Desperate Surgeon trying to resuscitate the dying patient, the Mathematician/Scientist became a Guide for the Surgeon, Cassandra wept because of what she knew, the Orphan hid from death and the Old Man facing the falling away of his ability to communicate with the outside world began to weep for his own demise. The Radio/Man finally breathed his last and was dropped into the sea. All began to weep, mourning their impotence, and little by little they began to blame, to rationalize and to argue amongst themselves. The Tower of Babel was in front of me as they talked over and beyond each other in panic.

As the Angel of America came into the scene of chaos accompanied by the Prophet Prior, everyone stopped at once and looked to them for rescue. Prior attempted to give back the angelic book, and refused take up their petition. Several implored him to hear their plea, but in his need to save himself from going down with the ship, he deserted them by picking up the fallen Radio/Man and walking off stage with the body over his shoulder.

There was a silence in the room after this as the actor’s collected themselves and prepared to do the scene immediately again as the assignment for the day had stipulated. This time was to be the “Real Scene.” It was to be transported to contemporary time, and to a boardroom of sorts for the Committee of Angels. They quietly put on coats and ties, suit jackets and high heels. There was some little talking, a bit of joking, but everyone remained in the emotionally available state needed for the scene. Several of them set up our much-used movement mats to create desks, and the room configuration changed from a centrally located lifeboat to a wide V-shaped conference table with two chairs at the top of the V behind a metal table connected to the mat/desks each of which had three chairs. The metal table held the radio (they used a theatrical lighting fixture). The only addition was a series of open road maps in front of each chair. When all was ready they began the “Real Scene.” The effect was magical. The repression of all that power, and wailing, and death was replaced by the coolness and status-seeking atmosphere of such a place. The stage was full of almost visible energy, of full consciousness, of attention, and of adjustment to the new circumstance. I could feel the air vibrating between them.

The roles changed, but the archetypes remained hidden behind the etiquette of the business meeting. The questions and insights that arose from this exercise were deeply significant. How does the relationship between the sexes change in such a setting? In the SuperScene, all seemed to have equal power and were unconcerned about their place in the scheme of things. However, when the suits went on, “soft” things such as grief, empathy, fear of the unknown, were protected behind the corporate armor.

The two men at the “head table” happened to be wearing suit jackets, and the two actors on the sides had neglected to bring jackets on that day. It made an enormous difference to the jacket-free men, they reported feeling unready for the battle. Jockeying for power became tantamount, jealousy and judgment and sarcasm flew around the room. The Grumpy Old Man Critic, turned into a younger Wise Ass, sitting, jacket free, at the very end on one side of the table. At the discussion following the scene, he expressed his feeling that he was unimportant not only because he was seated at the end of the table, but also because he was separated from the other men by the two women seated to his right. He also mentioned that he began comparing his tie to those of the other men.

The women, more than the men, seemed to have difficulty adjusting to the new environment. As the men became much less expressive and more verbal, the women began to take a quieter role. They, Cassandra and the Orphan, joined forces, the Orphan becoming a Experienced Businesswoman in the world of men, and Cassandra, a Junior Woman Executive mostly silent and looking to the Orphan for security. The awareness of the need to suppress feelings of compassion, gentleness, and fear of the unknown, took over.

The former Gorilla became a rather watchful Junior Executive, seated at the right hand of the Scientist and the Handyman quietly trying to assess his role in the situation. In this situation, the former King of the Jungle, became a Watcher in the Thicket, still a gorilla, but made impotent by his inability to adjust to technology.

The two men sitting in the middle, the Handyman and the Scientist, both jacketed, had direct access to the actual radio. They became the focal point of the meeting because of their supposed technical know-how. The Handyman, now a Technician, a sort of Second in Command to the Scientist, tried to use his body as an antenna reaching out for the current, moving from side to side, and at one time hitting the radio. The Scientist disdained the Handyman’s attempts preferring to quote facts and figures as a way of gaining status.

As the radio died, the committee broke into heated debate, everyone vying to make their personal point be heard. Tempers flared, disdain was in the air, and then the Angel of America entered the room, rather confused by the noise she had obviously heard outside the door. She came without Pryor, announced his coming, and went back out into the hall to fetch him. She had morphed from a powerful albeit limited Fiery Angel/Emissary to a rather anxious Casting Director who was going to present her latest talent discovery to a group of powerful and fractious television executives seeking to save the studio.

The Angel/Casting Director returned with Pryor, formerly a contorted and bandaged Leper, now a Conscientious Objector/ Actor attempting to return an unsavory script while remaining in favor with the Big Shots. The Angel who had heretofore not realized that she had a vested interest in his success, watched his every move now because her future also depended on his success at the meeting. When he could not be persuaded to accept the role, she attempted to help him, first by argument and challenge, and finally by acceptance of his choice in life. She mourned with him about the ultimate tragedy about to beset them all. As he petitioned for a blessing he became weaker and weaker, falling to the floor and righting himself. He fought to maintain his uprightness both physically and ethically.
Cassandra finally had to leave the table, but was stopped in mid-track by the Scientist who (as he later reported) was not going to let her get away so easily. The Orphan attempted to comfort him, the Scientist ridiculed him, the Handyman couldn’t figure out what to do with him, the Wise Ass confronted him, and the Gorilla sought refuge behind the Handyman. As Pryor declared his independence of both the committee and God, he picked up the maps and folded them in symbolic preparation for his journey. The Scientist refused to give him the map and Cassandra hid the map on her person.

At last we had achieved what we had set out to do, metaphors piled on top of symbols, shifting archetypes within a realistically played scene. The ancient stories were obvious in the power plays, the sexual politics, the fear of death, the importance of denial, the sins of the fathers visited on their children, the clash between order and chaos. Contemporary problems appeared in the demise of our ability to understand or alter technology and our reliance on experts. The symbolism of the Handyman trying to channel a capricious and unknown energy was powerful. Many issues were touched upon: the chimera of human power, the revelation of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, the paradox of striving for life with full knowledge of death. In our little classroom, they had moved through play towards Joyce and Aristotle with actions that excited them physically and emotionally.

From this point forward all of our scenes are rehearsed first as SuperScenes and when we feel that we are ready we jump into the “Real Scenes.” There are times when the SuperScene is better than the Real Scene, depending on the playwright. This has been very true with Suzan Lori-Parks and Sam Shepard. SuperScenes awaken the actor and the director in such a way that the need for blocking or beat-by-beat script analysis becomes a rather secondary exercise, good for cleaning up and reference. And yet, the SuperScene does not negate nor tamper with the script; we honor the playwright by our thorough investigation of the play from a philosophical, universal level;we maintain the structure of the scene. The changes we bring to the play are in the attempt to widen the ability of the audience to receive it on a more visceral level. We strive to make theatre.

References:
Ball, W., 1984. A Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing, first ed.: Quite Specific Media Group, Ltd.
Barrie, J.M., 1992. Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up. A Fantasy in Five Acts New York: Dramatists Play Service.
Becker, E., 1973. The Denial of Death New York: The Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster Inc.
Biilington, A., 2007. Post-Oscar: Forest Whitaker's Brilliant Acceptance Speech [online]. www.firstshowing.net
Bulinska, H., 2007. Mirror neurons as a proximal mechanism of social interaction. Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society, 8th ESA Conference, European Sociological Association. Glasgow Scotland.
Campbell, J., 1972. The Hero with a Thousand Faces Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience New York: Harper Perennial, HarperCollins Publishers.
Donnellan, D., 2006. The Actor and the Target second ed. London: Theatre Communications Group.
Eliade, M., 1963. Myth and Reality first ed. New York: Harper and Row.
Iacoboni, M., 2008. Mirroring People New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
James M. Kilner, A.N., Knkolaus Weiskopy, Karl J Friston and Chris D Frith., 2009. Evidence of Mirror Neurons in Human Inerior Frontal Gyrus. The Journal of Neuroscience, 29.
Joyce, J., 1916. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man B.W. Huebsch.
Kushner, T., 1992. Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika New York: Theatre Communications Group.
McKee, R., 1997. Story: Substance, Struture, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Polti, G., 1917. The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations Ridgewood, New Jersey: The Editor Company.
Ramachandran, L.M.O.A.V.S., 2007. The Simulating Social Mind: The Role of the Mirror Neuron System and Simulation in the Social and Communicative Deficits of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Psychological Bulletin, American Psychological Association, 133, 310-327.
Ramachandran, V.S., Freeman, A, 2001. Sharpening up 'The Science of Art'. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, 9-30(22).
Stanislavski, K., 2008. An Actor's Work London: Routledge Press.

The Words You Choose in an Argument Can Literally Break Your Heart « N e u r o n a r r a t i v e

2009-11-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

I found this interesting in light of Reason to Be Pretty, and Moira's comment about language during rehearsals. People with less ability to express themselves really do hurt themselves. The Words You Choose in an Argument Can Literally Break Your Heart Jump to Comments arguingIn the middle of a fight with your significant other, word choice is usually not foremost on your mind. But it should be, particularly if you’re a man, according to a new study in the journal Health Psychology – and not just to save your partner’s feelings. In the heat of stressful conflict, your brain is commanding the release of a stress-chemical cocktail comprised of proteins called cytokines–produced by cells in the immune system to help the body mount an immune response during infection. Abnormally high levels of these proteins are linked to cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, arthritis and some cancers. This study suggests that how rational or emotional your communication is directly corresponds with the levels of those chemicals in your body and the damage they can do. Forty-two couples made two separate overnight visits to the study lab over two weeks. During their first visit, couples had a neutral discussion. During the second visit, couples focused on the topic of greatest contention between them. Research interviewers figured out ahead of time what made the man and woman most upset in terms of their relationship and gave each person a turn to talk about that issue, thus igniting the conflict. During an argument, people tend to use two categories of words: emotionally charged and cognitive. Emotionally charged words come easily when angry and many of them have just four letters. Cognitive words such as “think,” “because,” “reason,” and “why” indicate that the participants of the conflict aren’t lost in rage. They can still make sense of the issues and are more likely to arrive at a resolution. Researchers measured the levels of cytokines before and after the two visits and used linguistic software to determine the percentage of certain types of words from a transcript of the conversation. The results suggest that people who used more cognitive words during the fight showed a smaller increase in cytokines. Cognitive words used during the neutral discussion had no effect on the cytokines. When researchers averaged the couples’ cognitive words during the fight, they found a low average translated into a greater increase in the husbands’ cytokines over time, but not an increase in wives’ levels. Researchers speculate that the reason for the discrepancy is that women may be more adept at communication, and perhaps their cognitive word use had a bigger impact on their husbands. Women in the study were also more likely than the men to use cognitive words. The big takeaway: choose your words carefully and keep the emotion in control when arguing. Over time (fellow men especially) we pay the price for losing ourselves in the fog of fury. ResearchBlogging.org Graham JE, Glaser R, Loving TJ, Malarkey WB, Stowell JR, & Kiecolt-Glaser JK (2009). Cognitive word use during marital conflict and increases in proinflammatory cytokines. Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 28 (5), 621-30 PMID: 19751089 hat tip: EurekElert

The five domains of human social experience:the SCARF model | The Mouse Trap

2009-11-16T10:31:00.000-08:00

The five domains of human social experience:the SCARF model | The Mouse Trap

Limits of empathy?

2009-11-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

CO-EVOLUTION OF NEOCORTEX SIZE, GROUP SIZE AND LANGUAGE IN HUMANS

R.I.M. Dunbar
Human Evolutionary Biology Research Group
Department of Anthropology
University College London
London WC1E 6BT

Keywords

Neocortical size, group size, humans, language, Macchiavellian Intelligence

Abstract

Group size is a function of relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. Extrapolation from this regression equation yields a predicted group size for modern humans very similar to that of certain hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Groups of similar size are also found in other large-scale forms of contemporary and historical society. Among primates, the cohesion of groups is maintained by social grooming; the time devoted to social grooming is linearly related to group size among the Old World monkeys and apes. To maintain the stability of the large groups characteristic of humans by grooming alone would place intolerable demands on time budgets. It is suggested that (1) the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on the development of a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and that (2) language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans are in line with the predictions for the relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. Analysis of a sample of human conversations shows that about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. It is suggested that language evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than is possible by direct observation alone.

1. Introduction
Primates are, above all, social animals. This has inevitably led to the suggestion that such intense sociality is functionally related to the exceptional cognitive abilities of these animals, as reflected in their unusually large brains (Jolly 1969, Humphrey 1976, Kummer 1982, Byrne & Whiten 1988). This claim is supported by the finding that mean group size is directly related to relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates (Sawaguchi & Kudo 1990, Dunbar 1992a). These analyses suggest that although the size of the group in which animals live in a given habitat is a function of habitat-specific ecologically-determined costs and benefits (see for example Dunbar 1988, 1992b), there is a species-specific upper limit to group size which is set by purely cognitive constraints: animals cannot maintain the cohesion and integrity of groups larger than a size set by the information- processing capacity of their neocortex.
The group size identified by this relationship appears to refer to the maximum number of individuals with whom an animal can maintain social relationships by personal contact. It is not necessary that all these individuals live in the same physical group: chimpanzees (among a number of other species) have a fission/fusion form of social system in which at any one time the community (the group in the sense defined above) is divided into a number temporary foraging parties whose composition changes repeatedly (see for example Wrangham 1986). Nor does it follow that a species' social system consists only of a single type of group: it is now clear that most primate species live in complex multi-tiered social systems in which different layers are functional responses to different environmental problems (e.g. the gelada and hamadryas baboons: see Dunbar 1988, 1989a). Rather, the neocortical constraint seems to be on the number of relationships that an animal can keep track of in a complex, continuously changing social world: the function subserved by that level of grouping will depend on the individual species' ecological and social context.
It is important to appreciate that the causal relationship between group size and neocortex size depends on the explanatory perspective (or level) adopted. In evolutionary terms, the size of a species' neocortex is set by the range of group size required by the habitat(s) in which it typically lives. However, seen in proximate terms from an individual animal's point of view, current neocortex size sets a limit on the number of relationships that it can maintain through time, and hence limits the maximum size of its group. This means that although the evolution of neocortex size is driven by the ecological factors that select for group size, we can use the relationship in reverse to predict group sizes for living species (Dunbar 1992a).
It is generally accepted that the cohesion of primate groups is maintained through time by social grooming (see Dunbar 1988). Social grooming is used both to establish and to service those friendships and coalitions that give primate groups their unique structure. As might be anticipated, the amount of time devoted to social grooming correlates well with group size, notably among the catarrhine primates (Old World monkeys and apes) (Dunbar 1991).
However, the relationship between group size and time devoted to grooming appears to be a consequence of the intensity with which a small number of key "friendships" (the primary network) is serviced rather than to the total number of individuals in the group (Dunbar 1991; Kudo et al, in preparation). These primary networks function as coalitions whose primary purpose is to buffer their members against harassment by the other members of the group. The larger the group, the more harassment and stress an individual faces (see for example Dunbar 1988) and the more important those coalitions are. It seems that a coalition's effectiveness (in the sense of its members' willingness to come to each other's aid) is directly related to the amount of time its members spend grooming each other (see Cheney & Seyfarth 1984, Dunbar 1984). Hence, the larger the group, the more time individuals devote to grooming with the members of their coalitionary clique.
The mean size of the primary network is, however, related to the mean group size for the species. This suggests that groups are built up by welding together sets of smaller primary networks (see also Cheney 1992) and that the total size of the group is ultimately limited not by the number of networks that can be welded together but rather by the size of the networks themselves.
In this paper, I ask what implications these two sets of results have for modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). If we extrapolate from the nonhuman primate regression, what group size would we predict for anatomically modern humans, given our current neocortex size? I then ask whether there are any observed human group sizes that correspond to this predicted value. Since the relationships that maintain group cohesion among nonhuman primates are serviced by social grooming, I use the regression equation for primates to determine how much time humans would have to spend grooming each other if they were to maintain group cohesion in this way for groups of the size predicted from neocortex size. Finally, I ask what implications this might have had for the evolution of language.
2. Methods
A number of different measures have been used in comparative analyses to provide unbiased estimates of relative differences in brain size. These have included the Extra Cortical Neurons Index (the ratio of the observed number of cortical neurons over and above those required for somatic maintenance, as estimated from body size, brain size and neural density: Jerison 1973), the cerebral Progression Index (the ratio of observed brain or neocortical volume to that predicted for a basal Insectivore of the same body size: Stephan 1972), the Encephalisation Quotient (the residual of brain volume, or neocortex volume, regressed against body weight: Jerison 1973, Clutton-Brock & Harvey 1980, Sawaguchi & Kudo 1990) and the Neocortex Ratio (neocortex volume divided by the volume of the rest of the brain or the volume of the hindbrain: Dunbar 1992a).
In examining the relationship between neocortex size and group size in nonhuman primates, I found that all these measures are reasonable predictors of group size. However, Neocortex Ratio (measured against the rest of the brain excluding the neocortex) gives much the best fit, accounting for 76% of the variance in mean group size among 36 genera of Prosimian and Anthropoid primates (using data on neocortex volume provided by Stephan et al 1981) (see Dunbar 1992a).
This analysis was based on the mean group size observed for a given genus rather than the maximum group size. The main justification for using the mean group size in these analyses lies in the nature of primate social groups. In contrast to the relatively simple aggregations typical of many birds and herbivores, primate groups are highly structured with individual animals embedded in a complex set of social and kinship networks (see Dunbar 1988, 1989a). Whereas bird flocks can shed individuals through trickle migration as soon as they exceed their optimal size, primate groups cannot: they have to wait until the group is large enough to permit it to fission into two or more daughter groups of a minimum size necessary to ensure the safety and survival of their members. This means that primate groups tend to oscillate in size over quite a wide range around the optimal value. At the point of fission (by definition, their maximum observed size), groups tend to be unstable and close to social disintegration: this, of course, is why they undergo fission at that point. Hence, maximum group size is likely to represent the point of complete social collapse rather than the maximum size of group that the animals can maintain as a cohesive social unit. Consequently, mean group size is likely to be a better estimate of the limiting group size for a species than the maximum ever observed in any population (for further discussion, see Dunbar 1992a).
3. Results
3.1. Group Size in Modern Humans
The best-fit reduced major axis regression equation between neocortex ratio and mean group size for the sample of 36 primate genera shown in Fig.1 was found to be:
log(N) = 0.093 + 3.389 log(CR) (1) (r2=0.764, t34=10.35, p<0.001),>
With a neocortex volume of 1006.5 cc and a total brain volume of 1251.8 cc (Stephan et al 1981), the neocortex ratio for humans is CR=4.1. This is about 50% larger than the maximum value for any other primate species (see Dunbar 1992a). Strictly speaking, of course, extrapolation from regression equations beyond the range of the X-variable values on which they are based is frowned on. However, we can justify doing so in this case on the grounds that our concern at this stage is exploratory rather than explanatory. We do so, therefore, in the knowledge that the confidence limits around any predictions are likely to be wide.
Equation (1) yields a predicted group size for humans of 147.8. Because the equation is log-transformed and we are extrapolating well beyond the range of neocortex ratios on which it is based, the 95% confidence limits around this prediction (from formulae given by Rayner 1985) are moderately wide (100.2- 231.1). Equations based on alternative indices of neocortex size (see Dunbar 1992a, Table 2) yield predicted group sizes that range from 107.6 (EQ residual of neocortex volume regressed against body weight) to 189.1 (Jerison's Extra Neocortical Neurons index) and 248.6 (absolute neocortex volume), all of which are within (or close to) the 95% confidence limits on the neocortex ratio equation.
In trying to test this prediction, we encounter two problems. One is deciding just what counts as the "natural" condition for H. s. sapiens; the other is the problem of defining the appropriate level of grouping for human societies living under these conditions.
It is generally accepted that human cultural evolution has proceeded at a very much faster pace than our anatomical evolution during the past few millenia. Given that our brain size has its origins in the later stages of human evolution some 250,000 years ago (Martin 1983, Aiello & Dean 1990), we may assume that our current brain size reflects the kinds of groups then prevalent and not those now found among technologically advanced cultures. The closest we can get to this is to examine those modern humans whose way of life is thought to be most similar to that of our late Pleistocene ancestors. These are generally presumed to be the hunter-gatherers (Service 1962, Sahlins 1972).
Given that hunter-gatherers are the only appropriate source of information, we then face the problem of deciding what constitutes the appropriate level of grouping within hunter- gatherer societies. There has, however, been considerable debate within anthropology as to the precise structure of these societies (see Service 1962, Birdsell 1970, Williams 1974, Morris 1982, Lee 1982). Irrespective of how this debate is eventually resolved, it is nonetheless clear that most hunter-gatherers live in complexly structured social universes that involve several different levels of grouping.
Thus, the !Kung San of southern Africa live in camps whose composition can change from day to day, but whose membership is mostly drawn from a distinct set of individuals whose foraging area is based on a number of more or less permanent waterholes; several of these "regional groups" make up a much larger tribal grouping typically based on a common dialect and occupancy of a given geographical area (see Lee 1982). The temporary living groups are drawn together into their larger regional groupings for up to three months each year when they congregate at traditional dry season camps based on what is often the only permanent waterhole in the region.
Lee (1982) refers to this as a concentration/dispersal social system and suggests that its origins lie in the unpredictable nature of food and water sources in typical Bushman habitats. He also argues that this form of flexible social system is typical of most (if not all) modern hunter-gatherers: rather similar patterns of social organisation have been documented, for example, among the Australian aboriginals (Meggitt 1965, Strehlow 1947), various Eskimo societies (Spencer 1959, Damas 1968), many of the North American Indian tribes (Helm 1968, Leacock 1969, Steward 1938, Drucker 1955) and among the Congo pygmies (Turnbull 1968, Hewlett 1988).
Given this complexity, any attempt to determine the "true" group size in hunter-gatherers would almost certainly be challenged by anthropologists on innumerable ethnographic grounds. In addition, two other more general objections might be raised. One is that most surviving hunter-gatherers occupy marginal habitats, and this may well influence both the size and the structure of their social systems (as is known to be the case with baboons, for example: Dunbar 1992a, in press). The second is that most living hunter-gatherer societies have been seriously disrupted, either directly or indirectly, by contact with modern colonial cultures.
In view of these caveats, and rather than get involved in the kind of fruitless argument about definitions that has so often clouded the literature in this area, I will proceed more cautiously and simply ask whether we find any groups at all that are consistently of the size predicted for modern humans by equation (1). Given the definition of grouping elaborated in the Introduction, the central issue is not whether a particular form of grouping occurs in every social system but whether a particular size of grouping does so.
Unfortunately, ethnographers have not often regarded censusses as an important feature of their investigations: although most studies allude to groupings of different kinds and often describe the structural relationships between them in great detail, they seldom provide quantitative data on the sizes of these groupings. Table 1 summarises all the data I have been able to find in the ethnographic literature for a number of historical and contemporary hunter-gatherer and swidden horticulturalist societies. I have included swidden horticulturalists since these may reasonably be considered to be settled hunter-gatherers (see Johnson & Earle 1987).
The data in Table 1 suggest that group sizes fall into three quite distinct size classes: small living groups of 30-50 individuals (commonly measured as overnight camps, but often referred to as bands in some of the hunter-gatherer literature), a large population unit (the tribe or in some cases sub-tribe) that typically numbers between 500 and 2500 individuals and an intermediate level of grouping (either a more permanent village or a culturally defined clan or lineage group) that typically contains 100-200 people. In a few cases (e.g. the Mae Enga and the Kaluli of New Guinea), more than three grouping layers were identified by the ethnographer. Most such groupings are, however, organised in a hierarchically inclusive fashion and I have therefore identified the groupings that are closest to the senses defined above.
Plotting these values on a graph produces what appears to be a clear trimodal distribution of group sizes with no overlap between grouping levels (Fig. 2). The average size of the smallest and largest grouping levels (means of 37.7 and 1154.7, respectively) correspond quite closely to the figures for bands (30-50) and tribal groups (1000-2000) that are widely quoted in the anthropological literature (e.g. Steward 1955, Service 1962). The level of grouping that appears to lie between these two has, however, been given little more than passing attention (even though the social significance of such groupings as clans have been discussed extensively). This is reflected in the large number of ? entries in Table 1, indicating that the ethnographer discussed such a grouping but gave no indication of its actual size.
The average size of the intermediate level groups for those societies for which accurate census data are available is 148.4 (range 90-221.5, N=9). If all the available data are considered (taking median values in cases where only ranges are given), the mean is 134.8 (N=15); if only nomadic hunter-gatherers are considered, the mean is 156.4 (N=4). None of these estimates differs significantly from the predicted value (z< +0.431, P>0.667 2-tailed). Indeed, with one exception (the Mae Enga of New Guinea), all the values given in Table 1 lie within the 95% confidence limits of the predicted value (and even the exception is only just outside the lower 95% confidence limit). More importantly, in no case does the mean size of any temporary camp or tribal grouping (i.e. the smaller and larger grouping types) lie within the 95% confidence limits on the predicted group size. Indeed, the mean values for the band and tribal level groupings are significantly different from the predicted value (z=6.401 and z=9.631, respectively, P<<0.0001).>
Note that the coefficient of variation for the intermediate level grouping is considerably smaller than those for either of the other two groupings (Table 1). This suggests that the constraints on the former are greater than those on the latter, as might be expected if the former is subject to an intrinsic (e.g. cognitive) constraint whereas the latter are more often determined by extrinsic environmental factors. The size of hunter-gatherer "bands" (or night camps), for example, is known to be particularly unstable and to be seasonally adjusted to the group's resource base (Turnbull 1968, Lee 1982, Johnson & Earle 1987). In contrast, the greater variability in the size of the tribal level groupings almost certainly reflects the impact of contact with modern (especially European) cultures and their attendant diseases; in many cases, these have drastically reduced the size of indigenous tribes.
It is important to note that the intermediate level groupings do not always have an obvious physical manifestation. Whereas overnight camps can readily be identified as demographic units in time and space and the tribal groupings can be identified either by linguistic homogeneity or geographical location (and often both), the intermediate level groupings are often defined more in terms of ritual functions: they may gather together once a year to enact rituals of special significance to the group (such as initiation rites), but for much of the time the members can be dispersed over a wide geographical area and, in some cases, may even live with members of other clan groupings. Nonetheless, what seems to characterise this level of grouping is that it constitutes a subset of the population that interacts on a sufficiently regular basis to have strong bonds based on direct personal knowledge. My reading of the ethnographies suggests that knowledge of individuals outside this grouping is generally less secure and based more on gross categories (a "Them" and "Us" basis as opposed to identifying individuals by name). More importantly, perhaps, in the case of New Guinea horticulturalists at least, the intermediate level grouping seems to provide an outer network of individuals who can be called on for coalitionary support during raids or the threat of attack by other groups (see Meggitt 1965b, Hallpike 1977). Thus, this intermediate level of grouping in human societies seems to correspond rather precisely in both size and social function to what we would expect on the basis of the nonhuman primate data.
It is of interest to note that estimates of the size of Neolithic villages in Mesopotamia are of about the same magnitude. Oates (1977), for example, gives a figure of 150-200, based on the fact that 20-25 dwellings seems to be the typical size of a number of village sites dated to around 6500-5500 BC.
In fact, it turns out that figures in the region of 150 occur frequently among a wide range of contemporary human societies. Thus, the mean size of the 51 communities (or Bruderhoefe) in the Schmedenleut section of the Hutterites (a fundamentalist group who live and farm communally in South Dakota and Manitoba) is 106.9 individuals (Mange & Mange 1980). According to Hardin (1988), the Hutterites regard 150 individuals as the limiting size for their farming communities: once a community reaches this size, steps are taken to split it into two daughter communities. Bryant (1981) provides another example from an East Tennessee rural mountain community (all of whom claim to be related to each other and regard themselves as a single social group): the total number of living members was 197 when the community was censussed at the end of the 1970s. Even academic communities appear to abide by this rule. Price & Beaver (1966), for example, found that research specialities in the sciences tend to consist of up to 200 individuals, but rarely more. Becher (1989) sampled network sizes (defined as the number of individuals whose work you pay attention to) in 13 academic sub- disciplines drawn from both the sciences and the humanities and concluded that the typical size of the outer circle of professional associates that defines a sub-discipline is about 200 (with a range between 100-400). It seems that disciplines tend to fragment with time as their numerical size (and, of course, literature) grows.
In addition, it turns out that most organised (i.e. professional) armies have a basic unit of about 150 men (Table 3). This was as true of the Roman Army (both before and after the reforms of 104BC) as of modern armies since the sixteenth century. In the Roman Army of the classical period (350-100 BC), the basic unit was the maniple (or "double-century") which normally consisted of 120-130 men; following the reforms instituted by Marius in 104BC, the army was re-organised into legions, each of which contained a number of semi-independent centuries of 100 men each (Haverfield 1955, Montross 1975). The smallest independent unit in modern armies (the company) invariably contains 100-200 men (normallly three or four rifle platoons of 30-40 men each, plus a headquarters unit, sometimes with an additional heavy weapons unit) (Table 3). Although its origins date back to the German mercenary Landsknechts groups of the sixteenth century, the modern company really derives from the military reforms of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in the 1620s. Despite subsequent increases in size to accomodate new developments in weaponry and tactics, the company in all modern armies has remained within the 95% confident limits of the predicted size for human groups. The mean size of 179.6 for the twentieth century armies listed in Table 3 does not differ significantly from the 147.8 predicted by equation (1) (z=0.913, P=0.361 2-tailed).
This fact has particular significance in the context of the present argument. Military units have to function very efficiently in coordinating men's behaviour on the battlefield: the price of failing to do so is extremely high and military commanders cannot afford to miscalculate. Given that the fighting power of a unit is a function of its size, we might expect there to be considerable selection pressure in favour of units that are as large as possible. That the smallest independent unit should turn out to have a maximum size of about 200 even in modern armies (where technology presumably facilitates the coordination of planning) suggests that this upper limit is set by the number of individuals who can work effectively together as a coordinated team. Military planners have presumably arrived at this figure as a result of trial and error over the centuries.
In the context of the present analysis, the reason given by the Hutterites for limiting their communities to 150 is particularly illuminating. They explicitly state that when the number of individuals is much larger than this, it becomes difficult to control their behaviour by means of peer pressure alone (Hardin 1988). Rather than create a police force, they prefer to split the community. Forge (1972) came to a rather similar conclusion on the basis of an analysis of settlement size and structure among contemporary New Guinea "neolithic" cultivators. He argued that the figure 150 was a key threshold in community size in these societies. When communities exceed this size, he suggested, basic relationships of kinship and affinity were insufficient to maintain social cohesion; stability could then be maintained only if formal structures developed which defined specific roles within society. In other words, large communities were invariably hierarchically structured in some way, whereas small communities were not.
Similarly, in an analysis of data from 30 societies ranging from hunter-gatherers to large-scale agriculturalists, Naroll (1956) demonstrated that there was a simple power relationship between the maximum settlement size observed in a given society and both the number of occupational specialities and the number of organisational structures recorded for it. His analyses suggest that there is a critical threshold at a maximum settlement size of 500 beyond which social cohesion can only be maintained if there is an appropriate number of authoritarian officials. Bearing in mind that Naroll's threshold is expressed as the maximum observed settlement size, it seems likely that the equivalent mean settlement size will not be too far from the value of 150 suggested by the above analyses.
Other evidence suggests that 150 may be a functional limit on interacting groups even in contemporary western industrial societies. Much of the sociometric research on industrial and other comparable organisations, for example, has demonstrated that there is a marked negative effect of group size on both group cohesion and job satisfaction (as indicated by absenteeism and turnover in posts) within the size range under consideration (i.e. 50-500 individuals: see, for example, Indik 1965, Porter & Lawler 1965, Silverman 1970). Indeed, an informal rule in business organisation identifies 150 as the critical limit for the effective coordination of tasks and information-flow through direct person-to-person links: companies larger than this cannot function effectively without sub-structuring to define channels of communication and responsibility (J.-M. Delwart, pers. commun.). Terrien & Mills (1955), for example, found that the larger the organisation, the greater the number of control officials that is needed to ensure its smooth functioning.
Other studies have suggested that there is an upper limit on the number of social contacts that can be regularly maintained within a group. Coleman (1964) presented data on friendships among print shop workers which suggest that the likelihood of having friends within the workplace reaches an asymptote at a shop size of 90-150 individuals. (The small size of the sample for large groups makes it difficult to identify the precise point at which "saturation" is reached.) Coleman explicitly argued that this was a consequence of the fact that there is a limit to the number of individuals within a shop that any one person can come into contact with. Moreover, his results also seemed to suggest that the large number of regular interactants that an individual can expect to have within a large work group limits the number of additional friendships that can be made outside the workplace.
Most studies of social networks in modern urban societies have tended to concentrate on specific sub-sets (e.g. "support networks") within the wider network of "friends and acquaintances" (see Mitchell 1969, Milardo 1988). One exception to this has been the study by Killworth et al (1984) who used a "reversed small world" protocol to determine the total network size (i.e. the total number of individuals that are known by name with whom a respondent has a degree of personal contact). Forty subjects were each given a dossier containing 500 fictious (but realistic) target individuals living in different parts of the world and asked to name an individual among their own acquaintances who (either directly or via a chain of acquaintances of their own) would be able to pass a message to each of the targets. The number of different acquaintances listed was assumed to be an index of the subject's total social network. The mean number of acquaintances selected was 134 (though the variance around this figure was considerable). Since the number of nominated acquaintances seems to increase more slowly as the number of targets increases, Killworth et al (1984) suggested that the asymptotic network size could be determined by extrapolation from the rate at which the curve of nominated acquaintances increases with increasing numbers of targets. They calculated this value to be about 250. Though just outside the 95% confidence limits on the predicted value (z=2.29, P=0.022 2- tailed), this latter estimate is not so far outside the range of likely values as to be seriously worrying. For one thing, the difference between the mean and asymptotic values may well reflect the difference between the functional norm (i.e. the number of personal friends that an individual has) and the maximum network size when more peripheral acquaintances are included. More research in this area is clearly needed to clarify this.
3.2. Grooming and the Evolution of Language
Given that primate groups are held together by social grooming, time budget constraints on group size become an important consideration (Dunbar 1992b). Even if a species has the cognitive capacity to manage all the relationships involved in large groups, there may be circumstances under which the animals simply do not have the time available to devote to servicing those relationships through social grooming. Relationships that are not serviced in this way will cease to function effectively; as a result, the group will tend to disperse and the population will settle at a new lower equilibrium group size (Dunbar 1992b).
A comparative analysis of the determinants of time spent grooming by primates has demonstrated that grooming time is a linear function of group size, at least within the catarrhine primates (Dunbar 1991). The distribution of the data suggests that grooming does not necessarily function in such a way that each individual grooms with every other group member: rather, as noted earlier (p.000), it suggests that the intensity of grooming with a small number of "special friends" (or coalition partners) increases in proportion to increasing group size. Irrespective of precisely how grooming functions to integrate large primate groups, we can use the relationship between group size and grooming time to predict the grooming time required to maintain cohesion in groups of the size predicted for modern humans.
Since our main concern is with how time spent grooming functions to maintain group cohesion, I have considered only those catarrhine species which do not have fission-fusion social systems. For the 22 species listed in Dunbar (1991, Table 1) that are described as living in stable cohesive groups, the reduced major axis regression equation is:
G = -0.772 + 0.287 N (2) where G is the percentage of time devoted to social grooming during the day (r2=0.589, t20=5.36, P<0.001:>
(Alternative forms for equation [2] using least-squares regression and/or the full Catarrhine data-set yield equations that are very similar in form, but whose coefficients vary somewhat. Although this affects the absolute values for the grooming time requirement, it does not affect their relative values; hence, the argument itself is unaffected. Equation [2] seems to give a generally better fit to the primate data; in particular, it yields a more accurate prediction of the amount of time devoted to social grooming in the very large groups typical of the gelada. I have preferred to use it here mainly for this reason.)
The group size predicted for modern humans by equation (1) would require as much as 42% of the total time budget to be devoted to social grooming. (The 95% confidence limits on predicted group size would yield grooming times that range from 28% to 66%.) This is more than double that observed in any population of nonhuman primates. Bearing in mind that this figure refers to the average group size, and that many groups will be substantially larger than this, the implications for human time budgets are clearly catastrophic. A group of 200, for instance, would have to devote 56.6% of its day to social grooming. For any organism that also has to earn a living in the real world, this would place a significant strain on its ability to balance its time budget. This problem would clearly be compounded if thermoregulatory considerations forced individuals to take time out to rest in shade during the hottest parts of the day: among baboons at least, temperature-driven resting appears to be incompatible with social interaction (Dunbar 1992b).
To place this in perspective in relation to relative neocortex size in the hominoids, I have calculated the equivalent figures for predicted group size and grooming time for all the genera of hominoids (Table 3). (The fact that only the chimpanzees live in groups of the size predicted by equation [1] is not of significance in the present context: this point is discussed in more detail in Dunbar [1992a].) The question I want to ask here is whether the neocortex size of non-human hominoids is large enough to yield group sizes that would lead to a time- budgetting crisis if the group's relationships had to be serviced by social grooming alone. Table 3 suggests that, although group size increases steadily through the hominoids, in no case is the grooming time requirement predicted by equation (2) excessive by the standards of other catarrhine primates. The figure of around 15% social time predicted for orang utans and chimpanzees compares very favourably with the values actually observed among baboons and macaques (see Dunbar 1991). Although larger bodied apes would need to spend a rather higher proportion of their day foraging than smaller-bodied baboons, the predicted grooming time requirement is not such as to suggest that it would place excessive pressure on their time budgets. Data summarised by Wrangham (1986) indicate that the various chimpanzee populations spend 25-43% of their time in non-foraging activities (mainly resting and social interaction). None of these populations would be forced to forgo any foraging time were they to spend as much as 20% of their time in social grooming.
The situation for modern humans is clearly very different and such high grooming time requirements simply could not be met. In baboons, it has been shown that when the actual amount of time devoted to social interaction is less than that predicted for a group of the observed size, the group tends to fragment easily during foraging and often subsequently undergoes fission (Dunbar 1992b). Faced with this problem, there are, in principle, only two solutions: either reduce group size to the point where the amount of grooming time is manageable or use the time that is available for social bonding in a more efficient way.
Given that minimum group sizes are ecologically imposed (see Dunbar 1988), there may be little that a particular species can do to manipulate its group size in a particular habitat. The only option will thus be a more efficient use of the time available for social bonding. In this context, the main problem with grooming as a bonding mechanism is that it is highly inflexible: it is all but impossible to do anything else while grooming or being groomed. In addition, grooming is an essentially dyadic activity: only one other individual can be groomed at a time.
Modern humans do, however, possess a form of social communication that overcomes both of these limitations very effectively: not only can speech be combined with almost every other activity (we can forage and talk at the same time), but it can also be used to address several different individuals simultaneously. Thus, language introduces major savings by allowing an individual to do two different things at once. My suggestion, then, is that language evolved as a "cheap" form of social grooming, so enabling the ancestral humans to maintain the cohesion of the unusually large groups demanded by the particular conditions they faced at the time.
3.3. Language as a Bonding Mechanism
That language (and hence speech) might have evolved as a consequence of the need to increase group size raises the question of just how it functions as a bonding mechanism. Conventionally, language has always been interpreted in terms of the exchange of information, and this has usually been understood as being the exchange of information about the environment (e.g. the location of prey, the coordination of behaviour during the hunt). However, the social intelligence hypothesis for the evolution of large brain size in primates (see Byrne & Whiten 1988) implies that the acquisition and manipulation of social knowledge is the primary consideration. The fact that language can be interpreted as fulfilling the same role as social grooming suggests that, rather than being the selective factor driving brain evolution, ecologically-related information-exchange might be a subsequent development that capitalised on a window of opportunity created by the availability of a computer with a substantial information-processing capacity.
How might language function as a mechanism for social bonding? There would appear to be at least two possibilities. One is by allowing individuals to spend time with their preferred social partners, thereby enabling them to acquire information about each other's behaviour by direct observation. This appears to be one way in which social grooming itself might work (Dunbar 1988). That the intellectual content of human conversations is often trivial (and, indeed, many conversations are highly formulaic and ritualised) lends some support to this argument. The second possibility is that language permits the acquisition of information about third party social relationships, thereby enabling an individual to acquire knowledge of the behavioural characteristics of other group members without actually having to observe them in action. (I am grateful to R.W.Byrne for pointing this out to me.) This would have the effect of considerably widening an individual's sphere of social knowledge relative to what would be possible from direct personal observation. This suggestion meshes well with the social intelligence hypothesis, and is given some support by the extent to which humans seem to be fascinated by gossip about other people's behaviour.
It is rather difficult to test unequivocally between these two alternatives. In any case, it is not obvious that they are necessarily mutually exclusive. However, it is clear that, if the second explanation is true, gossip about third party social relationships must constitute an important component of human conversations. Table 4 summarises data on the content of conversations in a university refectory. Approximately 38% of conversation content was devoted to personal relationships (either of those present or of third parties) and a further 24% involved discussion of personal experiences of a more general kind, both topics being clearly related to social knowledge. Considering the potential importance of academic and other intellectual topics of conversation in a university environment, these are remarkably high values. The acquisition and exchange of information about social relationships is clearly a fundamental part of human conversation. I suggest that it implies that this was the function for which it evolved.
3.4. Efficiency of Language as a Bonding Mechanism
If language evolved purely as a form of vocal grooming in order to facilitate the evolution of larger social groups, its design properties should be of about the right efficiency relative to grooming to allow an increase in group size from the largest observed in nonhuman primates to those predicted for modern humans. By "efficiency" here, I mean the number of interactants that can be simultaneously reached during a social interaction. In social grooming, this is necessarily one, because grooming can only be a one-to-one interaction. Language would thus need to allow proportionately as many individuals to be interacted with at the same time as is necessary to raise the size of nonhuman primate groups up to that predicted for modern humans.
The observed mean group size for chimpanzees (presumably the closest approximation to the ancestral condition for the hominid lineage) is 53.5 (Dunbar 1992a). Since the predicted size for human groups is 147.8, this implies that language (the human bonding mechanism) ought to be 147.8/53.5=2.76 times as efficient as social grooming (the nonhuman primate bonding mechanism). (The figure would be 2.27 if we used the neocortex-predicted group size of 62.5 given in Table 3 for chimpanzees.) In terms of the argument outlined here, this means that a speaker should be able to interact with 2.8 times as many other individuals as a groomer can. Since the number of grooming partners is necessarily limited to one, this means that the limit on the number of listeners should be about 2.8. In other words, human conversation group sizes should be limited to about 3.8 in size (one speaker plus 2.8 listeners).
Table 5 summarises data on small group sizes from a number of studies. Cohen (1971), for example, censussed the distribution of group sizes from the reservations book for Novak's Restaurant in Brookline (Mass.) over a 98 day period in 1968. Although the distribution was double-peaked (with near equal modes at 2 and 4, as might be expected), the mean size of 3070 groups was 3.8. (If groups of less than three people are excluded on the grounds that they have other concerns that social interaction, then the mean of 2020 groups is 4.8, but the modal group size is just 4 with a highly skewed distribution.) James (1952) collated information on the size of committees in a number of national and local government institutions in the USA, as well as four business corporations: mean size varied from 4.7 to 7.8 with distributions that were highly skewed towards the low end. In a study of freely forming groups in Portland (Oregon), James (1953) found a mean group size of 2.7 (solitary individuals excluded) on a public beach area. Group sizes were slightly smaller, but comparable, in a variety of other social contexts (shopping precincts, open streets, bus depots, school play grounds).
The most direct evidence, however, comes from a study of conversation group sizes carried out in a university refectory. Dunbar & Duncan (submitted) censussed conversational cliques that formed freely within interacting groups that varied in size from 2-10 individuals. They found that the average number of people directly involved in a conversation (as speaker or attentive listener) reached an asymptotic value of about 3.4 (one speaker plus 2.4 listeners) and that groups tended to partition into new conversational cliques at multiples of about four individuals (Fig. 4).
It turns out that there is, in fact, a psycho-physical limit on the size of conversation groups. Due to the rate at which speech attenuates with the distance between speaker and hearer under normal ambient noise levels, there is a physical limit on the number of individuals that can effectively take part in a conversation. Sommer (1961), for example, found that a nose-to- nose distance of 1.7m was the upper limit for comfortable conversation in dyadic groups; this would yield a maximum conversation group size of five individuals with a shoulder-to- shoulder spacing of 0.5m between adjacent individuals standing around the circumference of a circle.
Theoretical and empirical studies of signal-attenuation rates suggest that, as the circle of interactees expands with increasing group size, the distances between speaker and listeners across the circle rapidly become too large for conversations to be heard (Beranek 1954, Webster 1965, Cohen 1971). In addition, Webster (1965) found that a doubling of the distance between speaker and hearer reduces by about 6 Db the level of background noise that can be tolerated for any given criterion of speech recognition accuracy, with the reduction being proportionately greater for those with lighter voices (e.g. women). Cohen's (1971) analyses of these results suggested that at background noise levels typical of both offices and city streets, conversational groups will be limited to a maximum of seven individuals if they maintain a spacing distance of about 0.5m apart even when they speak in a raised voice; groups of five would be the limit with normal voice levels.
Although background noise levels in natural environments are unlikely to approach those found on busy city streets, comparably high noise levels are commonly found in large interacting human groups. Legget & Northwood (1960) measured maximum noise levels at cocktail parties of 120-640 people (including a coffee party for librarians!): they found noise levels that were typically in the region 80-85 Db in the mature stages of these parties. This is considerably in excess of the noise levels recorded in city streets and only just below the level sufficient to induce hearing impairment. At such levels, speech recognition is close to zero, conversation becomes impossible and maximum group size approaches one (see Cohen 1971, Fig. 7.1). Such noise levels may not be untypical of the periodic ritual social gatherings of primitive societies at which relationships are renewed and social gossip about third parties exchanged.
In summary, these results suggest that conversation does meet the requirements of a more efficient bonding mechanism, and that it does so at about the level relative to social grooming that is required to facilitate an increase in group size from those observed in nonhuman primates. Moreover, the psycho- physical properties of human speech provide some evidence to suggest that they are correlated with these demographic characteristics of human groups.
4. Discussion
The essence of my argument has been that there is a cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships, that this limit is a direct function of relative neocortex size, and that this in turn limits group size. The predicted group size for humans is relatively large (compared to those for nonhuman primates), and is close to observed sizes of certain rather distinctive types of groups found in contemporary and historical human societies. These groups are invariably ones that depend on extensive personal knowledge based on face-to-face interaction for their stability and coherence through time. I argued that the need to increase group size at some point during the course of human evolution precipitated the evolution of language because a more efficient process was required for servicing these relationships than was possible with the conventional nonhuman primate bonding mechanism (namely, social grooming). These arguments appear to mesh well with the social intelligence hypothesis for the evolution of brain size and cognitive skills in primates.
Three points should be noted. One is that there is no obligation on particular human societies to live in groups of the predicted size: the suggestion here is simply that there is an upper limit on the size of groups that can be maintained by direct personal contact. This limit reflects demands made on the ancestral human populations at some point in their past history. Once neocortex size has evolved, other factors may of course dictate the need for smaller groups. Precisely this effect seems to occur in gibbons and orang utans: in both cases, neocortex size predicts groups substantially larger than those observed for these species, but ecological factors apparently dictate smaller groups (Wrangham 1979). Thus, the observation that Australian Aboriginal tribes living in the central desert regions lack the larger clan-like groups does not necessarily disprove the hypothesis. The marginal habitats occupied by these peoples seems to dictate a foraging strategy based on small dispersed groups living in very large territories; this almost certainly creates communication problems that preclude the formation of larger social networks. The hypothesis would be invalidated, however, if there was no evidence for clan-like groupings in more productive environments.
(It is, incidentally, worth observing that we might expect the upper limit on group size to depend on the degree of social dispersal. In dispersed societies, individuals will meet less often and will thus be less familiar with each, so group sizes should be smaller in consequence; in spatially concentrated societies, on the other hand, individuals will see each other more often and group sizes should be proportionately larger.)
The second point is that the limit imposed by neocortical processing capacity is simply on the number of individuals with whom a stable inter-personal relationship can be maintained. This in no sense commits us to any particular way of structuring those groups (e.g. via kinship). Although the layers of grouping listed in Table 1 are often based on biological relatedness (involving the successive fission of what are usually termed segmentary lineages: see for example Meggitt 1965b), there is no requirement that groups necessarily have to be organised on genetic principles. Kinship is one dimension of primate societies that is relevant to individuals' decisions about whom to group with, and it often provides a convenient means for structuring a hierarchically inclusive pattern of grouping (see Dunbar 1988). However, even among nonhuman primates, it is not the only basis on which individuals choose whom to form groups and/or alliances with (see Cheney 1983). Primate groups are, strictly speaking, coalitions based on common interest and any number of biological, economic and social dimensions besides kinship may be relevant in individual cases (see, for example, de Waal & Luttrell 1986).
Finally, it should be noted that this explanation clearly stands in direct contrast to the conventional wisdom that language developed in the context of hunting to enable early hominids to communicate about the location of possible prey and to plan coordinated hunting expeditions. Indeed, the explanation for the increase in brain size within the hominid lineage on which my argument is based itself stands in contradiction to the conventional wisdom that these large brains evolved to enable humans to hunt and/or manufacture tools. Others (e.g. Wynn 1988; see also Blumenberg 1983) have already pointed out that the evolution of large brain size within the hominid lineage does not correlate well with the archaeological record for changes in tool construction. The markedly improved tool designs of the Upper Palaeolithic can thus be better interpreted as a consequence rather than a cause of enlarged brain size.
This analysis raises a number of additional questions. (1) At what point during the process of human evolution from the common pongid ancestor did such unusually large groups (and hence language) evolve? (2) How is it that, despite these apparent cognitive constraints on group size, modern human societies are nonetheless able to form super-large groups (e.g. nation states)? (3) To what extent is language a uniquely novel solution confined to the hominid lineage?
The fossil evidence (see Aiello & Dean 1990) suggests that brain size increased exponentially through time within the hominid lineage, being well within the pongid range for the Australopithecus species and not showing a marked increase until the appearance of Homo sapiens. This would tend to suggest that neocortex sizes are unlikely to have been sufficiently large to push the grooming time requirement through the critical threshold at about 25-30% of the time budget until quite late in hominid evolution. Application of equations (1) and (2) to all the fossil hominids for which cranial capacity estimates are available identifies the appearance of archaic Homo sapiens at about 250,000 years BP as the point at which language most likely evolved (Aiello & Dunbar, submitted). (It turns out that neocortex ratio is a simple allometric function of cranial capacity in all primates, including humans, with a very high coefficient of determination, thus allowing us to determine group sizes even for extinct species.) Language would thus have been a rather late evolutionary development. Just why early humans should have found it necessary to evolve such large groups remains uncertain, however, and there is little that can usefully be said to clarify this point at present (for further discussion, see Aiello & Dunbar, submitted).
(Let me forestall at least one line of criticism at this point by observing that the fact that we cannot identify a functional explanation to account for the evolution of a trait does not invalidate the fact that such a trait has evolved: it merely signals our limited knowledge. Humans clearly have larger group sizes than nonhuman primates, and groups of that size cannot have appeared by magic for no good reason. Whether we can ever answer that question will ultimately depend on whether we can extract the relevant information from the fossil record. It will also, however, depend on our developing theories of sufficient complexity to allow us to understand the interactions between the various components within what is inevitably a complex socio-ecological system (Tooby & DeVore 1987, Dunbar 1989b).)
The second issue concerns the fact that contemporary human societies are able to maintain very large groupings indeed (in the order of several hundred million individuals in a modern nation state). Two observations are worth making here. One is that the structure of these super-large groupings is not particularly stable through time, as has repeatedly been demonstrated in history by the eventual collapse of most large empires. The other is that language has two unusual properties that make it possible to form groups that are substantially larger than the 150-200 predicted by neocortex size: it allows us (1) to categorise individuals into types and (2) to instruct other individuals as to how they should behave towards specific types of individuals within society. Thus, we can specify that individuals identified as a class by a particular badge (for example a clerical collar or a sherrif's badge) should be treated in a certain rather specific way (e.g. with great deference). A naive individual will thus know how to respond appropriately to a member of that class on first meeting even though s/he has never previously encountered that particular individual before. This may be especially important in the case of those types of individuals (e.g. royalty, bishops, etc) that the average citizen does not normally have the opportunity to meet. Subsequent more intimate interactions may, of course, allow the relationship to be fine-tuned in a more appropriate way, but conventional rules of this kind at least make it possible to avoid the initial risk of souring a potential relationship by inappropriate behaviour at the first meeting.
This ability to categorise individuals into types clearly makes it possible to create very much larger groups than is possible by direct interaction. It is only necessary to learn how to behave towards a general type of individual, rather than having to learn the nature of each individual relationship. By structuring relationships hierarchically in this way, social groups of very substantial size can in principle be built up. The obvious example is, once again, the hierarchical structuring of military units. Notice that, even in this case, members of different groupings are often given distinctive badges or uniforms in order to allow them to be identified easily: this applies not only to categories of individuals who are considered to be "important" (e.g. officers) but also to members of different types of unit who are of equivalent status in the hierarchy (e.g. military policemen, marines, different regiments, etc).
It is significant, however, that larger groupings of this size appear to be very much less cohesive than groups that are smaller than the critical limit. Language seems to be a far from perfect medium for acquiring detailed social knowledge about other individuals: secondhand knowledge, it seems, is a poor substitute for the real thing. Indeed, it is conspicuous that when we do want to establish very intense relationships, we tend to do so through the much more primitive medium of physical contact rather than through language. The kind of "mutual mauling" in which we engage under these circumstances bears a striking resemblance to social grooming in other primates -- and suffers from all its disadvantages. One study of social grooming in a natural human population, for example, found that 92% of all grooming interactions were dyadic (Sugawara 1984). In this context, it is relevant to note that sociometric studies of "sympathy groups" suggest that we are only able to maintain very intense relationships with 10-12 other individuals at any one time (Buys & Larson 1979).
The final issue is the purely phylogenetic one of where language might have evolved from within the natural communication patterns of primates. Can we identify any features of nonhuman primate vocal communication that could function as a natural precursor for human language? The obvious analogy lies in the contact calls used extensively in many species of anthropoid primates to coordinate spacing between individuals of the same group. Although these calls have traditionally been interpreted as a mechanism for maintaining contact during movement (hence their generic name), it has become clear in recent years that there may be more subtle layers of meaning to these calls. Cheney & Seyfarth (1982), for example, found that vervet monkeys use contact calls to comment on events or situations as they occur. They were able to show experimentally that slight differences in the acoustical form of the calls allow the audience to infer a great deal about the event or situation on which the caller is commenting, even in the complete absence of any visual information.
So far, rather little work has been done on the phonetic structure of primate contact calls. The one exception here has been the gelada, whose vocalisations have been analysed in considerable detail by Richman (1976, 1978, 1987). Richman (1976) found that gelada are able to produce sounds that are synonymous with the vowel and consonant sounds (notably fricatives, plosives and nasals, as well as sounds articulated in different parts of the vocal tract such as labials, dentals and velars) that were hitherto thought to be distinctive features of human speech. Furthermore, Richman (1987) has pointed out that the gelada's highly synchronised exchanges of contact calls (see also Richman 1978) possess many of the rhythmic and melodic properties of human speech patterns. The conversational nature of these exchanges led Richman (1987) to suggest that gelada use these musical qualities to designate utterance acts so as to permit hearers to parse the sound sequence into smaller units in just the way that humans do when talking. He specifically related this ability to the social context, in particular the need to resolve the emotional conflicts inherent in many social situations. It is significant that, in the gelada, calling and counter-calling between individuals is closely related to the strength of the relationship between them (see Kawai 1979, Dunbar 1988, p.251).
We do not at present know whether the acoustic features identified by Richman are unique to the gelada. They might well not be. However, the conversational properties of gelada contact calls (in particular their use in highly synchronised bouts, often involving intense emotional overtones) do seem to be unusual. It may therefore be significant that gelada live in the largest naturally occurring groups of any nonhuman primate: the average size of their rather loosely structured bands (a high level grouping within an extended hierarchically organised social system based on a very much smaller stable reproductive unit) is about 110 (see Iwamoto & Dunbar 1983).
Clearly, the gelada have in no sense evolved language in the sense we would use this term of humans, but then neither have they developed the large cohesive groups chararcteristic of our species. However, it may be that the large groups in which this species sometimes gathers forced the evolution of a supplementary vocal mechanism for servicing relationships in a context where they are already at the limit of available grooming time (see Iwamoto & Dunbar 1983, Dunbar 1991). It is worth noting that this much has been achieved without the need to increase neocortex size: indeed, the gelada have a rather small neocortex compared to their baboon cousins (genus Papio) which probably explains the lack of cohesiveness in their larger-scale groups compared to those of the baboons.
This would seem to suggest that many of the basic properties of speech and language were already available in the more advanced nonhuman primates. What was required was their close integration and elaboration, and this may have been dependent on a significant increase in neocortex size in order to provide the necessary computing capacity. I simply suggest that the evolution of this increased capacity arose out of the need to coordinate the large number of inter-personal relationships necessary to maintain the cohesion and stability of larger than normal groups.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to a large number of individuals with whom I have discussed the ideas presented in this paper over the past four years, but in particular I thank Leslie Aiello, Dick Byrne and Henry Plotkin for their encouragement and advice.

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Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans

2009-11-05T05:47:00.000-08:00

Co-evolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans

Rehearsals

2009-11-04T06:31:00.001-08:00

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
- Thomas A. Edison

Mirror Neurons Don't Do Everything!

2009-11-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

I just happened upon an article wherein Deepak Chopra says the following:

Adopt a growth mindset. Chopra says research over the past five years has shown that when adversity strikes, happier people tend to see creative opportunities, while unhappier people see, well, adversity. "It's programmed through childhood through a phenomenon called mirror neurons," he says. "If you saw people complaining all the time when you were a kid, that's what you do. Your neurons mirror the behavior." To change your mindset, step back and ask yourself, How can I turn this into an opportunity?

Nawwwww, I am fairly certain that this is not what the mirror neuron research shows. Mirror neuron research seems to say that these neuron are primarily Motor neurons which respond primarily to intention and physical action. There is research that discusses response to emotional states and so forth but I have a feeling that you mother's complaint 40 years ago is not a part of the neuronal system.

Robert Parker

2009-10-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

Robert Parker

Times Online - Eureka Zone - WBLG: Music is hardwired in the brain

2009-10-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

Times Online - Eureka Zone - WBLG: Music is hardwired in the brain

Mirror Neurons

2009-10-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

Passing

2009-10-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

I read last night of the death of Hank Tausend, the husband of Iris Lieberman, a sweet and generously talented actress I have known for years. Iris and I never became more than acquaintances, not through any dislike, just the way life goes as we hustle through it.

We met in passing on the street several weeks ago and we exchanged greetings, and a very brief chat. She moved on down Michigan Ave and I continued up Michigan Avenue, passing through the lives of all those other unmet people, those weaving their ways towards their destinations, creating the warp and woof of the sidewalk. Passing each other unknown, known, eyed, despised, unnoticed, envied, admired, and dismissed.

We are eternally in passing.

So right now, I would like to take the time to express how much I love and treasure those whom I have passed and will continue to pass, those in my life closely, those whom I frighten, those whom I have met briefly, those whom I have lost, those who have no time for the likes of me, those whom I have hurt, and those who have hurt me and those living far and wide outside of my sphere. I love you all.

New Light On Nature Of Broca's Area: Rare Procedure Documents How Human Brain Computes Language

2009-10-16T07:42:00.001-07:00

New Light On Nature Of Broca's Area: Rare Procedure Documents How Human Brain Computes Language Shared via AddThis

The Thinking Meat Project

2009-10-16T07:04:00.001-07:00

The Thinking Meat Project

Posted using ShareThis

What I said, or tried to say, at the Neuroanthropology conference at Notre Dame

2009-10-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

Speaking to a group of amazing scientists was frightening, but I was so happy to be asked. Below is the 6 minute presentation I was asked to give.

My hypothesis is that theatre’s highest calling is to function as a ritual activity for audiences and actors wherein both are changed on a spiritual level. If we see the play, whether scripted or non-scripted as a journey from one point to another, it then follows that the actors, who are already initiated into the mystery of the play, must lead the audience through the terrain.

As a trainer of actors, I have two primary questions:

1.How can we best train actors to take the audience along with them on the journey of the play ?

. What can we theatre people learn from neuroanthropology, psychology, biology, and sociology and what can we tell those disciplines about human behavior.

I have been pursuing the answers to these questions for over thirty years.

As with all serious students of acting, the work of the Russian acting theorist and director, Konstantin Stanislavski, 1863-1938, was the beginning of real learning for me.

While Stanislavski’s work is frequently misunderstood, he remains the most important theorist of acting of all time.

At the end of his long search for a system to train actors, he finally concluded that in order to fully reveal the conflict of the play, the actor must give up the pursuit of being a character, and move to a more transitive concept of identity.

In my reading of identity theory over the past 30 years, I came to believe that his understanding of this malleability whether accepted by psychological theoreticians or not, was appropriate to drama, because plays take place when the world everywhere is changing for all involved.

Given this it seemed to me that the actor’s responsibility was not to delineate character, but to participate fully in the essential and archetypal relationships in the play and to and allow the audience to create the character in their own minds.

For this to happen, two stages are necessary for the actor. First analysis, and second, embodiment. The analysis involves careful study of the play’s given circumstances wherein the actor carefully and methodically implants vivid, sensory and emotionally connected images of the entire fictional world into her consciousness. As this occurs and accretes, the actor begins to live in a liminal state, neither completely in this world, nor completely in the world of the play. As this happens the emotional power of the images become one with her own experience and she begins to respond to her partners, be they objects or other people on an impulsive level within that world. And with repetition and physicalization, the patterns of actions become a part of her body and therefore her emotional life.

The actor must assume that her basic humanity is sufficient. She must abandon her own personality, but use her own instrument. At this point she becomes more a channel for action than an intellectual interpreter.

She must continually respond impulsively and physically to the forces acting on her. She must initiate actions as a result of her reactions to external forces. And to be truly effective those actions must be directed at her partners who will in turn react, thus forwarding the action of the play. Her challenge is to get out of her mind, to become oddly passive.

Whether the action of the play is physically realized or repressed, the actor’s job is to hop out of the analytical phase of rehearsal, and into instinctive response through the embodiment of need and action. A “flow” state will be reached and the actor will move beyond the limitations of intellect and self-consciousness.

Because the actor is working towards actions and reactions, rather than states of being, it is my belief that the audiences mirror neurons are excited. And they are excited to the extent that the players are intentional.

When I first was introduced to the idea of mirror neurons, I was struck because at the same time I was reading a new translation of Stanislavski and came upon the following quote.:

“Haven’t you ever been aware, in life or onstage, when in communication with other people, of a current emanating from your will flowing through your eyes, your fingertips, your skin? What shall we call this method of communication? Emitting and receiving rays, signals? Radiating out and radiating in? In the near future, when this invisible current has been studied by science, a more appropriate terminology will be established.”[1] Konstantin Stanislavski.

Well, that made all the sense in the world to me! These rays/signals were quite possibly mirror neurons and Stanislavski’s instinctive understanding of this phenomenon was being affirmed by the overwhelming power of Science!.

My own pedagogy has been centered in the belief that action/intention within a set of given relationships is in itself the revelation of character, therefore the actor’s job is to manifest identity through “doing” and let the audience decide what it means. In other words, the actor in humbly and courageously reacting to the situation at hand in a simple human fashion is doing exactly what the audience would also do. As the audience follows the logical small and large actions of the play, they can only be lost if the actor’s actions moves logically out of the imaginary circumstances.

Character-based theory postulates that characters/people have a recognizable center, and the actor’s aim is to find it psychologically and gesturally and to manifest the found identity through “becoming”. This leads the audiences to comfort, but not necessarily to true involvement.

My hope is to find a way to recapture our lost audiences and challenge them towards a deep empathy for what it means to be human through creating a theatre that is at once a ritual and a spontaneous happening wherein the actors spiritual journey is transmitted to the viewers.

Off topic, but maybe not.

2009-10-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

The letter below was written by a friend of mine, Lorenzo Clemons. He points to one of the major diseases facing the urban community, young men killing other young men. As far as I can see, this is actually a sort of suicide and needs to be treated as such. Jesse Jackson just called for the use of the National Guard to create safety for children going to and from school. Absurd. We need families walking to school together. We need mothers and fathers and uncles and aunties so engaged that the idea that their children should walk alone is not even considered. If all of these children had communal care and love, the horrors that confront us everyday would be eliminated.

How does this relate to myth, mirror neurons, etc? We need a return to the tiny daily rituals of womanhood, manhood and family. We need to encourage empathy which is our natural tendency. How do you train the mirror neuronal activity out of a child? Are the young mothers so overwhelmed, so disengaged that their gaze does not rest on their children frequently enough to encourage empathy? Has television as a babysitter created too much distance from the human presence while the babies watch unbelievable violence? I have no answers.

I know that I have no right to weigh in on this problem. I am an older, caucasian, non-mother, but we all are mothers of these children.

Open letter to College Age African-American and Hispanic/Latino Males (17 to 35)
By Lorenzo Clemons

Dear Son:

I hope you will allow me to call you son. I know you are not really my son, but you could have been and still could be. You could have been the son we lost in miscarriage some 15 years ago. You could be, if you find in my daughter the kind of person and women you can build a solid life and make your dreams a reality.

I find it necessary to write you because I have grave concerns about your future and in actuality my own future as well. The news lately has presented some serious challenges in the way of crime activities that seem to make a point to include you and people like you. The most alarming concern is that the crime comes from the same people you ‘hang’ with or you want to call “your boys”. It presents a problem for me, because of this danger; I will not have you to be proud of as I grow older. I will not have the bragging rights to talk about your accomplishments and how you are a “chip off the old block.” My friends will not be able to comment on how much you remind them of me in my younger days. I will not have you to prepare my grandchildren to love and respect the legacy that was given to me and I tried to pass along to you. What a waste and what a tremendous tragedy that one of “your boys” will and could cause all this destruction and interruption of our legacy.

When I was your age looking forward to success in my life, I do recall my friends wishing only the best for me. I recall the men in the neighborhood pointing with pride that “that boy is going to make it.” I didn’t know where or how I was going to make it, but I knew I had support and I was not in fear of “my boys” taking me out of life’s game or even pushing me off my life success track. Even when I served my country and was stationed in Southeast Asia during the sixties and many of my friends’s perished in Viet Nam; I had no fear of my success. One of the things while serving in the service, we found a way of bonding together by calling each other ‘Brother’. The greeting of the term “Brother” meant so much to each of us. We knew that the world was not always kind to people of color, and we knew that lynching’s and mob actions were actually taking place in the United States. We knew we had to support each other and in doing so making sure we mutually supported each others survival.

What a wonderful feeling it was to return home and start looking for that old girl friend or the joy of finding the a new love. It was great to get back to normal life and receive the hugs from momma and grand-momma, which encouraged us to live a good life and find a great wife. Not one time did we ever believe we were pursuing ‘bitches or chicken-heads”?

Why do you and your boys insist on calling each other ‘dogs’ and keep informing us that the expression should be viewed on the same level of my generation’s “Brother”. When we expressed the words, it was for spiritual respect and genuine hope that we would have individual and mutual success in life. The term ‘dog’ is not a term of endearment. I am aware that your generation professes love for animals, but yet you hear about dog fighting and animal abuse related to gang-ism, macho-ism and your generation’s insensitive-ism! So, how can you in good conscience continue to refer to each other as dog? Brother was not a term to mask the negative tone of the term nigger or niggah. In fact the term Brother was our way of making sure we would never have to face the derogatory term to describe a base and dehumanized concept of our manhood.

As a father of a daughter that I love and cherish, I know I would want to throw any man in the deep part of the river who referred to her as a bitch or a chicken head. The sounds of such words are offensive and demeaning to any sane person’s sense and sensibilities. I know there are some females who endearingly refer to each other as ‘bitch’, but that admonishment is for a letter to my daughters.

Son I know you to be for the most part a caring and concerned man, but I am concerned that you have not done enough to correct the behavior of “your boys”. If there is correction to be done, it must be by you. Me, and my boys are considered out of touch or not able to relate to the issue your boys face. Of course I and my boys see the issues in a different manner, but I want you to not think of our every conversation as me taking you to task for one failing or another.

I know any future happy existence for us all is tied to your grasp of what I am presenting to you today. I have this great concern that if you don’t speak up or take action of leadership in this ethical battle for ideology of respect and positive character, that all will be lost.

Finally, I want you to take a hard look at me and put yourself in my shoes and at my age and my space in time. I want you to really look into my eyes and my heart and know I love you even if I am fearful of your future. You can put my fears to rest by taking the challenge I present to you about your leadership role for you and your boys. Please know that there are many young boys who want to be like you. These boys are not much different then you when you expressed the desire to be like me, and I expressed the desire to be like the men who were a part of my life. Maybe I have not done all I could to instill the responsibility of life to you as I should, but I am willing with your help ready to correct what ever error I may have done in this life process. I need you to accept my requests to be more then you are right now and never fall below any goal or legacy that was set before my time and space. Know son that I love you with all my heart and I expect great things from you. There is never failure in a hard and serious try towards success. Thank you for being my son and thank you for what I know you will do!

My current life

2009-09-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear oh dear, I want to post, I want to edit, I want to write, I want to clarify, edify, amplify, all those fly things, but have painted myself into a corner of work with no time for reflection. If you are looking for any articles here, the Myth, Mirror Neurons, and Stanislavski piece is here. Just look for it. And, stay tuned till after October 15.

Evidence Points To Conscious 'Metacognition' In Some Nonhuman Animals

2009-09-21T05:30:00.001-07:00

Evidence Points To Conscious 'Metacognition' In Some Nonhuman Animals Shared via AddThis

Necessary Ritual and Play: Losing One of Our Own-

2009-09-19T07:32:00.001-07:00

This article was prompted by the sudden death of my former student Ricci Anselmi.

PROLOGUE

Late in August of 2007, before our school year at The Theatre School began, some of our students were rehearsing a production of the Misanthrope. In the cast was a young man with whom I had worked in the previous year. His name was Ricci Anselmi, and he was among the most promising students of his year. He was set to graduate in June of 2008. On a lunch break from rehearsal he was killed riding his skateboard. He had gone to the local snack shop and never returned. At first, the young actors at the rehearsal waited for Ricci to return with no idea that anything had happened four blocks away. Finally, they got word that he had been taken to the hospital and was seriously injured and not expected to recover.

The cast and other students immediately went to the hospital to say their last good-byes. Ricci was not injured physically, his head had struck a curb and his death probably occurred more or less immediately. He bore no scars and rested in the bed as if asleep. The students visiting spontaneously began singing to him, popular songs they knew together, hymns, and songs from school productions. Some danced and some recited poetry. All talked to him as if he were alive to receive their last wishes. All of this in his hospital room.

His death left a deep wide hole in the fabric of our school and it will never be the same.

Two days later, the opening day of school, the theatre school celebrated, as we always have, with a party thrown in the outdoor courtyard that is encompassed by the four sides of our building. Every member of the staff, faculty, and student body attends this picnic, and we cancel the first afternoon of classes for it. In general, this is a time to greet everyone, to rejoice in our love for each other, and for the graduating seniors to begin their campaign to raise funds for the pictures, resumes, and trips they will need for their official entrance into the business. They hold a raffle and provide the entertainment at this event. Ricci had entered school as a freshman with this group of young actors.

Of course, Ricci’s death prompted the administration to question whether such an event would be appropriate. The graduating seniors responded that it was to be made in honor of Ricci.

A somber crowd gathered, with the exception of the new class of freshmen who didn’t really understand what was going on. As we all talked softly and ate our pizza, the graduating seniors full of their trained athleticism bound up onto the raised wooden platform in the corner of the yard. All eleven of them standing together minus their missing brother. They began by once again announcing Ricci’s death for those who hadn’t heard the news, and then gave a brief eulogy. They followed the eulogy with a rap-song co-written for the occasion by the class, with a call and response from the audience. It focused on Ricci’s daredevil life; on his frequent run-ins with authority, and the responding words expected of the audience were something like “Ricci was a bastard who rode his way to heaven”. I am sure it was more profane than this, but my amazed response at the released energy in the courtyard kept me from really knowing anything much--- except that I felt renewed and able to move forward as did everyone in the yard. Ricci began to move from the realm of the human to the gates of the gods. He became a trickster in the minds of all of us and we were somehow given solace because of this and the enormous laughter that reverberated off the walls of the surrounding school as the song took its effect. It was the laughing that did it, not the crying and not the eulogy.

Ricci is still alive in all of our memories, both those who knew him, and for those hapless freshmen who entered our midst when such grief stood upon us. As we left the courtyard, we were all changed both in ourselves with the others who had been at the event.

As a passionate theatre practitioner, I believe that the most fundamental use of our ancient art form is the reconciliation of humanity with itself, with the gods, and therefore with the natural and metaphysical world. That reconciliation seemed to me to have taken place in the courtyard that August. Theatre for me is not necessarily what happens in a designated performing space; it occurs whenever an “actor” and an “audience” willingly appear. This coming-together- spilt, this dualism exists for a certain amount of time and when it dis-appears, the two parts leave each other with a greater appreciation for their shared-ness as well as their separateness. The quality of live theatre itself involves a sensual, nearly fleshly exchange between the spectators and the actors. Whether behind masks as for the ancient Greeks, or behind grease paint, or naked-faced, or dancing in front of a dying youth in a hospital room, actors exist biologically in the same space as the audience but separate from it. As the brilliant British director and acting theoretician Declan Donnellan says, “A theatre is not only a literal space, but also a place where we dream together; not merely a building but a space that is both imaginative and collective.”

Imitation and imagination are the original technologies of learning and remain the methods by which babies learn to survive in the world. The joy of discovery and the necessity of role–enactment are genetic and shared by both humans and many not humans as well. We all play the copycat game. Actors may, through some exceptionally sensitive mirror- neuronic activity continue to “enact,” but everyone is born an actor. For any child to learn, he or she must be curious, attentive, observant, and mimetic. These little scientists test theories of nature and human nature through interactive and imitative play. As the child learns, he or she must be rewarded for success. “Eating, walking, talking, all are developed by copying and applause. Whatever human instinct is latent, it reaches virtuosity only after acute observation, repetition, and performance. Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival.” Thus the making of theatre, mimesis with an audience is one of the primary experiences of early life.

As a child’s experiments and learning begin to bear fruit, the growing consciousness soon discovers that not all discoveries are pleasurable. Some discoveries are painful. Some demand more energy than seems possible. The world begins to expand exponentially and threatens to reel out of control. Some way of capturing it is required. In order to get a handle on things, we codify things, name things, disregard most things, and deny many things, as a response to the painful experience and observation of unpleasantness. We decide against moving onto further research at quite a young age. It is as if we set out purposefully to blind ourselves. As if we decide that we must limit the vastness of human joy and terror, simply to avoid being overwhelmed.

As we begin to darken and focus the lenses of our minds, by accepting certain things into our world and eliminating others, what emerges is what we begin to call a ‘self.’—’Self’ as a reduction of possibility. —’Self’, as a closing down of expansion. As we separate our ‘self’ from the other less rewarding possible “selves” we perform a succession of self- abortions. However, somewhere left in the dark reaches of the brain is the loneliness for those lost others, the ones we left behind, the ones we didn’t become. Perhaps this is the true beginning of existential shame for us, the burying of a multiplicity of potential beings, so that we may stand-alone. The feeling of being alone and “only” begins to take hold, and it too terrifies us. We long to re-unite, not only with the former familial audience, but also with our forgotten potential lives. The actor, Forest Whitaker said the following in his acceptance speech for his Oscar: “...when I first started acting, it was because of my desire to connect to everyone--to that thing inside each of us. That light that I believe exists in all of us. Because acting for me is about believing in that connection and it's a connection so strong, it's a connection so deep, that we feel it. And through our combined belief, we can create a new reality.”

Not only the various forms of theatre, but also religion, dreams, and simple people-watching becomes a means for us to re-visit that which we deserted; to be re-united with a half-forgotten reality if only for a while. The left-behind others about whom I speak, include not only our mourned-for frail other-selves, but all of the strong, single-minded appetites on which we might have built alternative lives and identities, the tyrants, the mischief makers, the saints, the hedonists, the builders, the martyrs, the torturers, the dancers, the executioners, the sensualists, the explorers, the madonnas, the gluttons, the criminals, the lovers. They include the lions and tigers and monkeys and snakes and eagles and elephants and coyotes and dogs we could have been. All of these qualities of ravenous need form the archetypes familiar to us from the legends of many cultures and are hardwired and given faces in our unconscious world. It is truly unfortunate that we live in a more or less One God world; it seems so much more prudent to have many with whom to commune, who are not quite so awesome. Rather like being in a large family where Dad and Mom are so busy just feeding and housing the brood that the sisters and brothers become lesser gods for each other.

Like such a large family, religion and theatre provide the spaces, both actual and metaphoric in which to connect physically, intellectually, and emotionally with our archetypes alongside the equally disconnected other humans walking among us. The rituals performed by the actors and priests with their dances, movement, and words serve to unite us with the powerful symbols of our archetypes and to aid in our acceptance of the helpful and our rejection of the hurtful. The rituals repeat symbolically the old stories, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. Often the metaphor is lost to the participant, but there is still comfort in its very being.

In religion, I postulate, the more frequently we participate in these performances, the more accustomed we are to them, the more comfort we tend to receive from them. Religion exists to make us feel good about ourselves (if we obey the rules) as well as to create an orderly view of the universe and perhaps the afterlife.

Theatre’s function is to educate and entertain, not to make us feel good about ourselves nor secure in the universe. And when it is good it challenges the rules and forces us to see things differently. As a theatre practitioner, I am aware that there are only, arguably, forty-six plots, or twelve or four depending on your reference. Be that as it may, there are a finite number of stories. If one also understands that there are only seven or eight essential relationships, one can easily see that, given some arithmetic beyond my capabilities, there are no new stories. Both theatre and religion repeat the old stories; that is a major part of their ritual function, but only the theatre intends to irritate us with new questions about the old stories. Even when it has no political or sociological ax to grind, its function, besides ritual, is that of investigation into what makes us human and how to interpret the world around us.

Formal theatre (and I include film as well) in the United States has, for the most part, moved beyond it’s ancient traditions and been relegated by its general public to entertainment with the occasional serious piece thrown in for balance. Also, and with few exceptions, the American theatre has never been very political and rarely symbolic. The need for communal access to more universal ideas dealing with Rudolph Otto’s ‘mysterium tremendum’ seems to have been lost or rejected in the original colonies as a function of art in general. This was probably owing, in part, to the religious suspicion of the power of the churches’ secular and obstreperous brother to create doubt in the mind of its audience. The pilgrims and religious zealot who made up a powerful percentage of our orignal settlers wanted the audience for themselves, and wished to eradicate the sensuality implicit in the art of performance. The European theatre they had left was at its apogee when they departed. The beauty of the language, the frankness of the stories, and the complexity of the ideas and arguments addressed at that time were truly astonishing. This theatre, and its later writings, was available to a large number of people of any rank and the Protestant churches must have been truly envious.

Our Western theatre tradition began, at least according to some theorists, with the golden age of the Athenian theatre. The Greeks saw theatre attendance as a necessary part of citizenship because it served several functions simultaneously. We believe that the rituals of this theatre themselves were based on the sacrifice of a goat in early Greek religious practices. We know the first actors were also priests. As this began to change, as the Athenians became a democracy, the theatre was given a larger function. It united the citizenry on a psychic level, it re-enforced Greek political values of argument and counter-argument, and third it educated the potentially under-educated crowds both politically and morally. As Greece developed, so also did its theatre both for good and for ill. The writing became increasingly more humanly complex as the qualifications for citizenship became narrower. At the end, only the elite were left to attend.

Also, for the Greeks, the theatre was not a weekly or even monthly event; it was connected to a religious or civic festival and took place outdoors as a part of other competitive events. The festivals of Dionysius included winners and losers amongst the playwrights and eventually among the actors. The writers were also statesmen, soldiers, citizens and businessmen, and therefore an integrated portion of the elite community. However, there was little conflict between the temple and the theatre at the time. Such an idea would have been considered absurd. Of course Plato did come along and begin the proposed destruction of to theatre and mimesis which was almost completed by the Christians. But before him, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes mounted their astonishing works for the eternally grateful world.

At the festival of Dionysius, the largest of the Greek religious events, playwrights had to offer three tragedies and a comedy. This combination acknowledged that tragic feelings needed to be cauterized with the hot blade of comedy. And the comedies of the Greeks were generally satires based on present day events while the tragedies were most often historical and therefore metaphorical. Finally, though, the problem that beset the Greeks was the same problem that besets the modern theatre in America. It is an elitist event witnessed by elite audiences.

Most of my fellow theatre practitioners would attribute this problem to a lack of exposure to audiences whom they assume would fall in love with the experience as they themselves did. So we truck children by the busload to productions of Hamlet, or Antigone, or whatever else is edifying, and can’t understand when they don’t return. We attribute a lack of finances to our inability to advertise sufficiently, disregarding the amazing popularity of such black shows as Men, Money and Golf Diggers advertised only by small African-American centered publications and handbills. If we look around us, we will see that sunny, romantic, upbeat Broadway musicals are recycled endlessly throughout the land at high schools and community theatres and that Wicked is not having trouble getting an audience. The black plays on the famous ‘chitlin circuit’ tend to be very well attended despite their expense. And they draw an audience of people who rarely attend the kinds of ‘serious theatre’ we theatre folk flock to see. These shows are not ‘serious’ theatre, and therefore beneath our contempt, while they find audiences and money right beneath our much too sensitive noses. We have fallen victim to our own pessimism and tend to forget that pessimism and darkness are the part of life that most people want respite from. These shows do, however feature, clear and linear story lines with archetypal figures in the plot configurations. Their only fault from our theatrically pure perspective is a sentimental desire for a laugh and the possibility of a happy ending, just like the comedies at the end of the tragedies several thousands years ago. Or just like our elevation of Ricci Anselmi to demi-god status.

The difference in subject matter between the big shows attended by people who would never consider going to one of our earnest store fronts or our towering institutions is that they want to laugh as well as cry, and most of us theatre folks want them to think deeply about our offerings and possibly become politically or socially active and possibly cry as well.

As far as serious theatre, theatre that deeply examines issues using theatrical expression, we are pretty useless to change the world. We know this. We mope about it, we are self-righteous about it, we shake our fists at TV for taking our rightful audience, but finally we know the problem. We may be just too snooty, too taken with our importance.

We have pooh-poohed the very means by which we might be effective—vaudeville and musical theatre, clowning and dancing. We have forgotten how to entertain. Right now, many things are happening to change that attitude the Blue Man Group, Second City, the bread and puppet theatre, the Cirque du Soleil, the renewed interest in Clowning all are pointing the way through their use of humor, spectacle, and astonishing physical athleticism. The current theatre sees itself as needing to engage physically more that with language—there is a danger in this insofar as it moves from a theatre of narrative to one of sensation only. However, if the theatre is to be an effective vehicle for change, it must be far more entertaining, more physically arresting and far less self-conscious without losing it ability to tell an old story. It must re-unite its audiences with itself in a far more recognizable way.

A while ago, I went to see a film called “Charley Wilson’s War.” I went because I was interested in the subject matter, the war in Afghanistan, but also because Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman were in it. It is the only film on the topic of the war I have ventured out to see since “The Departed” which I dutifully saw. The film was enormously entertaining, full of wit and featuring some great archetypes, the reformed reprobate, the wise but gruff guru, the beautiful temptress, the uptight bureaucrat, the dumb crook, and lots of goddesses. I recognized all of these types and took great delight in seeing them played by some wonderful actors who shook the truth out of these old stand-bys. As we left the theatre, my friend reported that Charley Wilson was one of the few movies concerning the Middle East that was making money for the studios. My guess is the reason for this is the easy recognizability of the demi-gods and the comedy of the whole thing.

As far as I can see, most of the citizens of the US regardless of political leanings have been in mourning for the death of our culture, our dreams, our soldiers, and our government. We need to go to the metaphoric courtyard, to mourn, to eulogize, and then to actively laugh as we all participate to heal the rift in our hearts and souls.

So where does that leave us theatre people in the fight against the most urgent and challenging of all the wars, the fight for the environment? It seems obvious, that in spite of our fears, we must go outside, we must joke, we must make merry, we must find the archetypes that soothe, we must press the flesh. We must cut the giants of terror down to size. We must embrace a new Commedia, a new space and a new form of spectacle. We must create a series of wakes for our fallen planet.

Let us have burials and wakes for the trees we know we will lose to infestation, let us remember the parks that used to exist and plant afresh. Let us join together with the environmentalists, the oceanographers, the weather scientists, and make something of our shared problems. Let us create intrusions of a comic and musical variety into the workaday world. Bring a cow to the town square and sing to it; decorate the land to be destroyed, rip out invasive species and howl as we do so and then plant again, stage events in alleys where the garbage lurks. Celebrate the hunters who cull the herds of starving deer, rather than cursing them. Lets us close off streets on Arbor Day and name the trees. There are many, many things we can do that get us back into the courtyard at in The Theatre School at Depaul University to mourn, and then to celebrate, and then to get back to work strengthened as a community because of our mutual participation in the theatre of life.

Neuronarrative

2009-09-18T06:19:00.001-07:00

Neuronarrative Shared via AddThis

Myths, Mirror Neurons, and Stanislavski

2009-09-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

I have much to do before I really will feel ready to publish this article. Many colleagues have graciously read it and given me truly constructive criticism. However, because my students are asking me about it so frequently, I am posting it here. If you read it and have observations, criticisms, annoyances, or whatever, please feel free to comment. I am not wedded to anything in it but the ideas and the transmission of these ideas.

“Haven’t you ever been aware, in life or onstage, when in communication with other people, of a current emanating from your will flowing through your eyes, your fingertips, your skin? What shall we call this method of communication? Emitting and receiving rays, signals? Radiating out and radiating in? In the absence of an alternative terminology let us stick with these words since they illustrate very clearly the kind of communication I have to talk to you about. In the near future, when this invisible current has been studied by science, a more appropriate terminology will be established.”[1] Konstantin Stanislavski.

These rays/signals, radiating out and radiating in were encountered in a laboratory in Parma, Italy in 1996 by a team of neurophysiologists led by Giacomo Rizolatti. This team was studying the brain responses of Macaque monkeys when grasping objects with their hands.

“ . . . the neurophysiologist, Vittorio Gallese was moving around the lab during a lull in the day’s experiment. A monkey was sitting quietly in the chair, waiting for her next assignment. Suddenly, just as Vittorio reached for something, he does not remember what, he heard a burst of activity from the computer that was connected to the electrodes that had been surgically implanted in the monkey’s brain . . .Vittorio immediately thought the reaction was strange. The monkey was just sitting quietly, not intending to grasp anything, yet this neuron affiliated with the grasping action had fired nevertheless.”

What this meant was undeniable; the idea that monkey see, monkey “virtually” do is true.

We now partially understand what Stanislavski knew all along; the waves or rays are known as mirror neurons. This article will attempt to describe the implications of this research for actors, directors, and acting teachers through an examination of myth and archetype as a means to access such neuronal response in both actor and audience. If one considers that responses to archetypal images, actions, characters are on some level physiological, it would then follow that such images would excite this type of mirror neuronal activity.

Mirror neurons, simply put, are elements in the brain that fire unconsciously in the presence of another person’s activity. Consider a baseball fan watching a player hit a ball; Fmri imaging research shows that mirror neurons light up in the same area of the fan’s brain as those in the brain of the hitter. The viewers of the game and the player have the same neuronal pattern; their brains are synchronized by the firing of these mirror neurons. Furthermore, if our fan in the stands has at some point actually played baseball, the neurons will be even more excited than those in someone who has never played or seen a ballgame. What this implies is that we as humans respond to recognizable actions in recognizable situations that because of their familiarity have the power to engage us on a biological level.

At the base of dramatic texts is the telling of stories (either linear or non-linear, spoken or silent) that deal with basic human difficulties, and the attempt by the characters to find solutions to those problems. In order for a story to be recognizable to an audience, actors must do actions with intentions that are meant to overcome these obstacles, just as the baseball player needs to overcome the pitcher and the fielders by hitting, bunting or sacrificing in order to win the game. Actions for actors therefore can be understood as something done either physically or verbally with intentions. And as many acting teachers have found, if the action/intention is conceived of physically, its effectiveness for the actor and for his/her partner is stronger. This is true partially because such ideas move toward basic animal urges that are stronger and less sophisticated than the more shaded gradations of language usage. My belief is that such physical imagery on the part of the actor activates the actor’s mirror neurons, simply through the kinesthetic visualization necessary to conceive it. Another aspect of mirror neuron research strongly suggests that these neurons pick up not only the physical aspects of action but also the intention behind it for the viewer.

As we know, scenes and acts are compilations, either linear or episodic, of actions/intentions leading to desired ends. It therefore follows that the viewer’s mirror neurons will be physically reinforced by the clarity of the actor’s actions and intentions. This clarity can be strengthened through the actor’s commitment to finding the physical action beneath the psychological. Joseph Campbell says in Transformations of Myth Through Time "Art is the clothing of a revelation." We as theatre artists must translate into visible reality, the myths and revelations presented to us by our playwrights and poets.

Physically conceived action/intention can be a direct and non-intellectual translation of deeply seated feelings, needs, and desires that cannot be fully verbalized. And these are revealed and understood partially as a result of the activity of mirror neurons.

Plays have as their skeletons, a mix of the essential relationships and stories that in the past have been explicated in myth and ritual. They constitute memories begun in forgotten times and in dreams enacted around campfires. When the actor or director or designer digs deeply to find the bones of these narratives under the layers formed by the accretions of time and place, and reveals these bones bare, their mythical and archetypal natures are released and form a bridge for the viewer to the essential meanings obscured by day-to-day life. Both actor and audience are bound together in the time that is “Once upon a time.”

Theatre from this perspective can constitute some of the most compelling rituals remaining in our society. It is as if, in re-enacting the myth beneath the plot, the actors awaken a set of mirror neurons that remove the separateness of the audience and join it with the actors and with itself. For such ritual re-enactments to take place, powerful and archetypal characters and relationships must be called to the place of battle and engagement.

Jung suggests that an archetype is a person, a relationship, or a situation that is so rooted in our DNA that in its presence we are moved in emotionally. Archetypal characters are embodiments of powers and energies whose clashes are the eternal working out of the joyful/sorrowful songs of life and death.They may be called by different names in different times and places because they must speak to the individual culture; however, whatever the name, the acknowledgement of the energy or power being personified can be said to be universal because these powers emerge from our shared biology not from our separate societies.

If an actor’s job is to engage the audience either emotionally or intellectually, it would then follow that when she is truly effective, it is because she has hit upon an archetype of some kind either consciously or unconsciously and hooked into the actions underlying the archetypal role. She is channeling, if you will, a shamanistic activity, and when that occurs, the mirror neurons of all are engaged because of the shared recognition of the mysterious comedy/tragedy of life.

“All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us.” Carl Jung

To this end, it seems appropriate that actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs, and acting teachers study myth, ritual, and archetypes and find ways to consciously translate these unconscious powers.

Joseph Campbell says that a myth is a recounting of a hero’s journey out of his community or place of balance, and into a fearful world where he must confront fearful powers before returning to the place of peace. His return brings with it a new knowledge for the hero and the community itself. I began my own exploration of the idea of “Acting Myth” following Campbell’s idea that the essence of any hero’s journey is to risk the confrontation with chaos whether willingly or not in order to grow.

The hero shakes up the world and is shaken by it in turn; there is no other way for meaningful growth to happen. As Nietzsche says, "All learning is suffering, and all suffering, learning." This exit into the world of shapes and trials is simply a replaying of the birth trauma, and the desire to return to the womb of unknowingness. This idea is central to tragedy, but as is obvious, it applies equally to all forms of drama. The hero must do things that are out of his/her sphere of experience in order to overcome the obstacles on the way. These kinds of actions are inherently theatrical in their uniqueness; they need not be logical in this world, but because we are in a mythical time and place, they are appropriate. To return to the idea of mirror neurons, one could say that the witnessing of this surprising but recognizable quest, will create a more excited neuronal activity because the ideas presented emanate from our shared biology, but the situation is changed in such a way as to draw us in.

I further believe that, as in life, every character in a play believes him or herself to be the hero of his or her own life. So, as the actor prepares, he or she must examine the journey of their own characters. If everyone in the story seems him or herself as the protagonist, the resulting collisions are more profound than the idea that the hero has a subordinate cast. Each character in the play brings a particular power to the world, a visceral attachment to his or her primal antecedents. None are more or less important, none more right or wrong, none either good or bad.

Because life is the never ending struggle to balance order with chaos, government with anarchy, freedom with restraint. I believe that every character is motivated by the desire for more order or for more chaos depending on their given circumstances. I use the word chaos because of its ancient underpinnings for western civilization and its links to terror, sex, and death . However, as a means of speaking to my students, I often employ the archetypal conflict of pragmatist(order) vs. romantic(chaos) or, and more easily, Peter Pan (chaotic, romantic, right brained, etc) versus Wendy (orderly, pragmatic, left brained). From this perspective, Peter Pan is the eternal willful child with the possibility of both cruelty and total dependence (puer aeternus) and Wendy is the eternal mother (mater aeternus) with equal control of nurturance and abandonment. Peter’s ability to fly is an ancient dream of immortality, of breaking from the earth, of escaping death as symbolized by human limitation and Wendy, the true hero of the story, escapes the earth to fly off with a godlike creature in order that she may choose her destiny consciously rather than mindlessly. The story has roots in the primary myths of the Middle East.

The two archetypes desire and need each other, and fear each other in almost equal parts. The yin and yang is quite obvious. Peter, fears that more order will trap him, bury him alive, shackle him to a world of responsibilities, a diminishment off of his identity/freedom, thus removing his god-like immortality. In other words, the female power may pull him into the earth, the domain of women who are the keepers of life and death. Wendy, fears falling from heights unknown and “never landing”, of always clutching for a life rope which is eternally slipping from her grasp, of being unable to fulfill her procreative and authentic destiny as a human woman, to relinquish her creative powers. If she remains in Neverland she loses her immortality as realized in her progeny, she will be as if dead to the world. she will "never-be." The conflict between these two as they attempt to find a balance is for me, the never-ending story at the very bottom-most layer of life. And with all of these ideas, we begin class.

The remainder of the article will be an examination and recitation of the exercises we did and the scenes we did in my MFA 2 classes in 2008 and 2009 to try to utilize these ideas.
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On His Blindness

2009-09-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

This poem is frequently in my mind, so I share it here.

Origin: Quotation from the great English poet John Milton (1608-74). After going blind, Milton wrote the poem "On His Blindness". In the sonnet's last line, he reflects that even with his disability he has a place in the world:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.

Third Man syndrome

2009-09-14T10:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112746464&sc=emaf

Article on the biological power of Relationships

2009-09-14T10:15:00.001-07:00

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-10/ff_christakis/

The Encultured Brain

2009-09-14T05:09:00.000-07:00

I am really excited today! I have been chosen to present at the Neuroanthropology Conference: The Encultured Mind conference at Notre Dame University on October 8. My topic will be Neuroscience and the Actor. Guess I better read up! If your are interested, go to http://neuroanthropology.net

The Genesis Project: Lots of Creation Myths

2009-09-14T04:47:00.000-07:00

The Genesis Project

Play and Necessary Ritual: Losing One of Our Own

2009-09-13T11:51:00.001-07:00

This article was prompted by the sudden death of my former student Ricci Anselmi.

PROLOGUE

His death left a deep wide hole in the fabric of our school and it will never be the same.

Of course, Ricci’s death prompted the administration to question whether such an event would be appropriate. The graduating seniors responded that it was to be made in honor of Ricci.

perception and imagination: Masters of Theatrical Illusion

2009-09-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

perception and imagination: Masters of Theatrical Illusion

The Landscape of Memory

2009-09-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vSbsSh3CoA

Place, imagination, and identity

2009-09-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

place, imagination, and identity

The Motive for Metaphor

2009-09-13T11:08:00.001-07:00

The Motive for Metaphor

Acting and Mirror Neurons, Panel with actors

2009-09-13T11:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loB-Lg0X1qo

Mario Iacoboni, Depth Electrode Recordings in the Brain

2009-09-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

Mario Iacoboni, Depth Electrode Recordings in the Brain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqAY0UbzAI

2009-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

Mario Iacoboni on Empathy and Fairness, Pt 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL9auHozQL0

2009-09-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Arts and Cognitive Neuroscience

Experiences in which the senses are intermingled in usual ways are a common motif in the descriptions that mystics provide of their unordinary sensory experiences. This workshop examines the phenomenon of synaesthesia from a multi-disciplinary perspective in order to advance our understanding of the relationship between synaesthesia, metaphor, creativity, and religious and artistic practices. Series: "Humanitas" [4/2008] [Humanities] [Show ID: 13189]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7Dy--hmgUA

2009-09-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Intersubjectivity and Mirror Neurons

Marco Iacoboni, M.D., Ph.D., discusses data on mirror neurons that suggest that their role in intersubjectivity may be more accurately described as allowing interdependence. This interdependence shapes the social interactions between people. where the concrete encounter between self and other becomes shared existential meaning that connects them deeply. Series: "M.I.N.D. Institute Lecture Series on Neurodevelopmental Disorders" [6/2008] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 14664]

Dr http://www.salon.com/books/review/2009/05/18/evocriticism/print.html

2009-09-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Why do we often care more about imaginary characters than real people? A new book suggests that fiction is crucial to our survival as a species.

By Laura Miller

May. 18, 2009 |

Why do human beings spend so much time telling each other invented stories, untruths that everybody involved knows to be untrue? People in all societies do this, and do it a lot, from grandmothers spinning fairy tales at the hearthside to TV show runners marshaling roomfuls of overpaid Harvard grads to concoct the weekly adventures of crime fighters and castaways. The obvious answer to this question -- because it's fun -- is enough for many of us. But given the persuasive power of a good story, its ability to seduce us away from the facts of a situation or to make us care more about a fictional world like Middle-earth than we do about a real place like, oh, say, Turkmenistan, means that some ambitious thinkers will always be trying to figure out how and why stories work.

The latest and most intriguing effort to understand fiction is often called Darwinian literary criticism, although Brian Boyd, an English professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the author of "On the Origin of Stories," a new book offering an overview and defense of the field, prefers the term "evocriticism." As Boyd points out, the process of natural selection is supposed to gradually weed out any traits in a species that don't contribute to its survival and its ability to pass on its genes to offspring who will do the same. The ability to use stories to communicate accurate information about the real world has some obvious usefulness in this department, but what possible need could be served by made-up yarns about impossible things like talking animals and flying carpets?

Boyd's explanation, heavily ballasted with citations from studies and treatises on neuroscience, cognitive theory and evolutionary biology, boils down to two general points. First, fiction -- like all art -- is a form of play, the enjoyable means by which we practice and hone certain abilities likely to come in handy in more serious situations. When kittens pounce on and wrestle with their litter mates, they're developing skills that will help them hunt, even though as far as they're concerned they're just larking around. Second, when we create and share stories with each other, we build and reinforce the cooperative bonds within groups of people (families, tribes, towns, nations), making those groups more cohesive and in time allowing human beings to lord it over the rest of creation.

The popular understanding of evolutionary biology can be sketchy even among (I'm tempted to say especially among) its most enthusiastic lay proponents. That's why it's important to point out that, whatever you've heard about "selfish genes," the secret to humanity's success lies less in Hobbesian competition than in individuals' capacity to cooperate, and even to act altruistically. While there are short-term benefits to individuals who behave selfishly -- say, by stealing or hoarding food -- the long-term benefits of sharing usually outweigh the quick payoff, provided that everybody else in your group also participates fairly. Human beings are what biologists call "hypersocial," more social by far than any other animal, and the major product of our deep investment in sociality is our culture: our language, tools, political institutions, clothing, medicine, sculpture, songs, religions, etc.

In short, humanity itself is an element, like the weather or seasons, that each of us needs to negotiate in order to survive. We're innately skilled at reading each other's intentions, judging a person's position in the current social hierarchy, checking the emotional temperature in a room, detecting when our companion isn't paying attention to us, and so on. Those who are especially adept at this are said to have good "social skills," but the average human being is a pretty impressive social navigator even when not conscious of what she's doing. It's only the rare exceptions -- people along the autistic spectrum, for example, whose social instincts and perceptions are impaired -- who make us aware of just how essential these abilities are when it comes to getting by in this world.

Boyd acknowledges that factual stories give us pertinent information about our world and the people in it -- that my neighbor is a serial killer, for example. However, fictional stories encourage and permit us to hypothesize, to speculate about potential situations we've yet to encounter and to anticipate how to respond appropriately. Were I to discover tomorrow that my neighbor had a wall entirely covered with photographs, newspaper clippings and charts with pushpinned strands of yarn connecting the items, I might conclude, thanks to my years of watching cop shows on TV, that my neighbor was either a serial killer or a law enforcement professional obsessed with catching a serial killer. I'd know better than to accept his offer of a nightcap because even if he were the detective rather than the killer, if I got too involved with him, sooner or later the serial killer would kidnap me and hold me captive in a deserted warehouse as part of a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Fiction also fosters a part of cognition known as the "theory of mind," one person's understanding that another person has feelings, desires, intentions and beliefs, the latter of which may or may not be correct. A child's ability to deduce that another child will mistakenly believe that a ball is still in a basket because the second child wasn't in the room when the ball was moved to a bucket develops surprisingly late, around age 5. Theory of mind is at the heart of empathy, and our brains are replete with systems for reinforcing it, such as the recently discovered mirror neurons, which fire both when you're, say, dancing and when you're watching someone else dance.

These cognitive features explain why tears pour down your face when you see a performance of "Romeo and Juliet," even though you know the characters aren't real people and the actors are just pretending. Furthermore, the brain turns out to be more like a muscle than scientists once thought, and the more you exercise the thinking and feeling parts of it vicariously, through stories and other kinds of play, the more active and developed those parts of the brain become.

Most of us, of course, don't realize any of these processes are going on; we just think that consuming fiction feels good. But, as with sex, Boyd notes, pleasure and other enjoyable emotions are a kind of bait, coaxing us to do things that will help propagate our genes. The affection we feel toward fictional characters like Dorothy Gale or Tom Sawyer is akin to the warm belonging we seek among friends and family, drawing us into the kind of group affiliation that can spell the difference between life and death. The late novelist David Foster Wallace once told me that reading fiction made him "feel unalone -- intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness." That profound sense of comfort he described is, as he correctly perceived, quintessentially human, an incentive to keep connecting with each other despite our inevitable conflicts and tensions.

Stories in their most rudimentary forms -- parables, fables, myths -- usually champion what Boyd calls "prosocial values," such as sharing, kindness, honesty and so on; in short, morals. The moral of the story of the boy who cried "wolf" is that if you violate people's trust by faking distress, they will eventually stop believing you entirely and fail to come to your aid when you really need them. Other stories, like "Cinderella," insist that liars like Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters will ultimately be thwarted and punished, while the virtuous will receive their just rewards. This sort of narrative fosters our taste for "social monitoring," the policing of group members to make sure that nobody tries to cheat the system, that everyone pulls his own weight and takes no more than his share of the group's resources.

Lastly, stories command attention, which is a valuable commodity among all social animals. Lower-status primates pay more attention to higher-status primates than vice versa. Good storytellers earn attention and admiration, and they also provide their audience with the pleasure of a communal experience that strengthens the bonds within a group. They set forth the group's shared beliefs, myths, symbols and history (real or legendary), creating a greater identity, a culture, that can expand beyond the boundary of small, local communities where everyone knows each other personally. That's one reason we have national epics like the story of Gilgamesh, the Hebrew Bible and the poems of Homer.

In the second half of "On the Origin of Stories," Boyd attempts to apply his idea of "evocriticism" to two exemplary works: the "Odyssey" and Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hears a Who." Up to this point, the book is informative, if poorly written, a mass of clotted and repetitive prose that nevertheless offers some sound insights if you're willing to really work for them. But evocriticism doesn't scale down (or is it up?) very effectively. Boyd exhaustively details Homer's narrative techniques, such as focusing on a larger-than-life yet sympathetic protagonist with a distinct goal, erecting obstacles in the protagonist's path to that goal, breaking the long narrative into discrete, digestible blocks with their own internal conflicts and resolutions, ending on a satisfying note of fulfillment when Odysseus is finally reunited with his wife, Penelope, and so on. All of this he presents, with the flourish of revelation, as brilliant strategizing on the part of Homer, an author who understands that he must seize and hold his audience's attention.

But come on, who doesn't know that? Even the rabble that masses on Amazon's review pages grasps that the storyteller's prime directive is to retain his audience's interest; "I couldn't get into it" is the complaint of first and last resort for the minimally literate customer. As for the narrative devices that Boyd lauds -- a likable hero, stumbling blocks in the way of the ultimately happy ending, etc. -- that's the stuff of remedial "Write a Novel!" guides and screenwriters' seminars. (Oh, and by the way, in case you hadn't noticed while spending your childhood amid star-bellied sneetches and loraxes who speak for the trees, Dr. Seuss has a penchant for strong liberal messages.)

To be fair, Boyd feels compelled to insist on the obvious. That's because "On the Origin of Stories" is at least partly written to refute Theory, the dominant trend in late-20th-century academic literary criticism. Theory is deeply invested in the idea that human identities are entirely "constructed" by the cultures people grow up in, that we are born blank slates with no innate traits. A disciple of such evolutionary psychology evangelists as Steven Pinker and Denis Dutton, Boyd has the enthusiasm of a convert, and he shares his gurus' propensity for overstating their case as well as exaggerating the strength and recalcitrance of the other side. A hardcore constructionist camp does still persist in academia, but it's such a tiny and marginal element in the culture at large, that evolutionary psychologists come across as disingenuous when they insist on portraying themselves as an outnumbered, ragtag band of embattled crusaders.

The truth is that evolutionary psychology has enormous popular cachet; books by Pinker and Robert Wright vastly outsell those of, say, the constructionist gender theorist Judith Butler. Furthermore, evolutionary psychology and sociobiology (and by extension "evocriticism") strive to wrap themselves in the mantle of science, but they are fundamentally speculative; more sciencey than scientific. Unlike actual science, their claims can't be falsified, given that the human behavior they purport to explain has evolved over vast periods of time and can't yet be observed in the process of continuing to evolve simply because we haven't been aware of evolution long enough to do so. (How do we know when people first told stories, for example? No physical evidence remains, and the most we can do is suggest that it co-evolved with practices like cave painting, whose true purpose we also can only guess.) That doesn't mean that some of these theories aren't plausible, or that certain observations -- like the universality of spoken language and religious beliefs among human societies -- aren't pretty persuasive.

The difficulty is that once culture became the ascendant environmental factor affecting humanity, the game changed fundamentally. It's true, as Boyd observes, that culture transforms itself in a way that resembles biological evolution; ideas and practices that catch on (such as Christianity or rap music) become more and more prevalent. But natural selection is a mindless process by which random mutations succeed or fail and the successes slowly accumulate. The evolution of culture is intentional, directed by the desires of human beings pursuing certain goals. (Nobody intends biological evolution to happen, unless you believe in God.) That's why it took 540 million years for the eye to evolve, while the detective story has become culturally ubiquitous in the mere 170 years since Edgar Allen Poe published "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

While evolutionary psychology, when kept on a judiciously short leash, seems capable of adding a lot to our understanding of narrative, it's a pretty crude tool to apply to something as recent and culturally volatile as literature. Identifying innate traits is a matter of observing average human behavior across large populations and in diverse societies. Even when a behavior seems obviously adaptive -- like the tendency of men to be sexually attracted to women who appear fertile -- there can be significant exceptions. Although every neurologically normal human being acquires spoken language and enjoys stories and almost everyone places a high value on some kind of group membership, it is only the majority of human beings who are sexually attracted to individuals of the opposite sex and of reproductive age.

And hardly anybody is a great writer or a storyteller of genius. Such individuals could well be freaks and anomalies, strange yet wonderful products of unique confluences of genetics and culture, illustrating next to nothing about humanity as a whole. Even if storytellers on average are getting better (and how could we quantify that?), we can't say that evolution is causing the improvement, any more than we can claim that natural selection is responsible for the fact that microchips are getting smaller. If sociobiology has yet to come up with a truly persuasive evolutionary explanation for homosexuality (and it really hasn't), then it's certainly not in a position to explain Shakespeare.

Instead of trying to fit an outlier like Homer into his evocritical scheme, Boyd would be better off looking at patterns of story that occur across cultures. He notes in passing that there are "200 folk variants" of the story of how Odysseus and his men escaped from the Cyclops' den by strapping themselves to the underside of the blind giant's sheep. Rather than asking evocriticism to explain how the rarity of Homer came to occur, why not ask why this same story keeps cropping up again and again in slightly different forms? What makes it so popular?

Such a move, however, would change the category of Boyd's studies from English literature to folklore, a less prestigious discipline on the academic scene, perhaps. (Even valiant scholarly crusaders are subject to the evolutionary pressures of status-seeking, after all.) Still, if evocriticism or Darwinian literary criticism or whatever it's called hopes to contribute something significant, it will probably need to turn away from literature's great works and their authors, at least at first and for a while, and focus on popular culture, ancient and recent. At present, one of its seminal texts argues that "Pride and Prejudice" is about courtship in a society where men are valued for their wealth and social class and women for their beauty and social class, a thesis that manages to be simultaneously crushingly obvious and not really accurate while explaining exactly nothing about why Jane Austen is better than the average romance novelist. Genius is, by definition, exceptional, while evolutionary science concerns itself with the universal, or the nearly universal. Unless this new school of criticism can find a way to reconcile that conundrum, it may soon find itself extinct.

-- By Laura Miller

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The Dream Narratives of Debris by Peter Schwenger

2009-09-12T10:47:00.001-07:00

Dream Narratives of Debris 75
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
The Dream Narratives of Debris
Peter Schwenger
Consider the so-called decorator crab. As it moves across the sea floor,
it covers itself with debris, such as bits of algae and sponge, which it attaches
to the small hooked hairs that cover its carapace. Most critical essays proceed
in a similar manner. Bristling with snipped-off quotations, footnotes and
bibliographical references, they adopt a protective coloration that allows
them to pass unharmed through intellectual deep waters. Nor is this only
superficial decoration: the body of the essay is often assembled from wide-
ranging sources, which in their conjunction may form an idea quite different
from any one of its components. The present essay is no exception to this
rule. It assembles itself out of bits and pieces of Freud, Piaget, Lévi-Strauss
and Baudrillard; and its examples are drawn from artists in various media:
Joseph Cornell, Elizabeth Bishop, Edward Gorey and Donald Barthelme.
That debris (no disrespect is intended) is assembled here precisely in order
to make a point about the ways that debris is assembled – the ways that, in
the first instance, material residues give rise to certain narrative
arrangements, which are never so thoroughly assembled that they escape
from under the sign of debris. They have now been translated into mental
debris, and as a consequence partake in the kinds of associative processes
that also give rise to dreams. Narratologists have expended much effort in
the attempt to lay out narrative’s syntax. But the structuring principles of
narrative may be more akin to those of the decorator crab than to those of
the grammarian. Within the drowned world of debris, narrative and dream
clasp hands.
Joseph Cornell supplies our first example of such an encounter. On April
15, 1946, he took time out from constructing his boxes of assembled objects
to clean up his workspace. That night Cornell wrote in his diary: “Had
satisfactory feeling about clearing up debris on cellar floor—‘sweepings’
represent all the rich crosscurrents ramifications etc that go into the boxes
but which are not apparent (I feel at least) in the final result” (Cornell 128).
While it is common enough for an artist to feel that the completed work has
fallen short of the vision, it is less common for an artist to locate that vision
in the work’s material leftovers—in sweepings, debris, the residues of the
day. “The residues of the day” is of course a phrase taken from a book that
Cornell knew well and repeatedly cited, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.
There Freud asserts that psychological residues of the preceding day are
essential ingredients in the formation of dreams because they offer to the
unconscious points of attachment through which its impulses may be
manifested (562-64). The same thing can be asserted of Cornell’s material
version of the day’s residues: points of attachment—or in Cornell’s words
“crosscurrents ramifications etc”—determined the way his boxes were
assembled. Indeed, even before the assembling process began in that cellar
workspace, the material brought with it a certain psychological freight. For
Cornell’s projects were often generated in the course of hunting expeditions
among the junk shops of New York: his preliminary material was already
residue even before it ended up on the cellar floor. And out of this residue of
past days arose “impressions intriguingly diverse—that in order to hold
fast one might assemble, assert, and arrange into a cabinet” (Cornell, quoted
in Ratcliffe 46). Such an arranging of debris mimics not only the processes
by which dreams are assembled but also those by which narratives are
assembled, blurring the line between them.
A continuum between dream and narrative is outlined by Freud in his
essay “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.” The continuum runs from
dream to day-dream to play to creative writing—but, as we will see, it by no
means runs only in one direction. If dreams are assembled from the residues
of the day in order to express a wish fulfillment, then in this regard night
dreams and the more consciously narrative day-dreams both serve the same
function. It is a function that in childhood has been served by play. Through
play, says Freud, the child “creates a world of his own, or, rather, re-arranges
the things of his world in a new way” (143-44), thereby gratifying erotic or
egoistic wishes. This rearranging of things recalls us to the cabinets of Cornell,
which not only used toys but were themselves exhibited as toys, and so
described by Cornell himself in a diary entry: “perhaps a definition of a box
could be as a kind of ‘forgotten game,’ a philosophical toy of the Victorian
era, with poetic or magical ‘moving parts’ . . . . That golden age of the toy
alone should justify the ‘box’s’ existence” (Ades 29). The toy itself, however,
is less important than the state of mind that animates it, or is animated by it.
Thus John Ruskin tells us that, deprived of conventional toys in his childhood,
he passed hours in tracing the figures in his carpet (Praeteritia 19), and Henry
James’s famous use of that image encourages us to see a narrative element
in the child’s daydream here. Still, that narrative element is scarcely a
conventional one. Cornell underlined a passage in his copy of Jean Piaget’s
Dream Narratives of Debris 77
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
The Language and Thought of the Child that characterized child narratives by
“an absence of order in the account given, and the fact that causal
relationships are rarely expressed, but are generally indicated by a simple
juxtaposition of the related terms” (107; cited in Keller 107). Marjorie Keller
has argued that this indicates an anti-narrative bias in Cornell. But I would
contend that rather than eliminating narrative, or even “subverting” it,
Cornell moves the narrative element to a liminal space where it may play in
subtle and elusive ways. The liminality of this space is indicated by Piaget
later in his book when he states that a child’s characteristic ways of ordering
are “intermediate between logical thought and that process which the
psychoanalysts have rather boldly described as the ‘symbolism’ of dreams”
(158).
In the essay on “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming,” fiction occupies
a similar liminal space. For Freud, fiction naturally replaces the play that
adults are no longer allowed to indulge in, and it performs the same function
of fulfilling wishes. It’s true that Freud is here dealing with formula fiction,
written by “the less pretentious authors of novels, romances and short stories,
who nevertheless have the widest and most eager circle of readers of both
sexes” (Freud, “Creative Writers” 149)—Violet Winspear, that is, rather than
Virginia Woolf. Yet these conventional, ready-made fantasies not only enact
the wish-fufilling daydreams of their readers; they may also become elements
in the assembling of dreams. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud explains
that secondary revision tries to give to the disparate elements of the dream
a conventional narrative form: it “seeks to mould the material offered to it
into something like a day-dream” (Interpretation 492). At the same time it
can make use of day-dreams: it “will prefer to take possession of the ready-
made day-dream and seek to introduce it into the content of the dream”
(492). And of course this “ready-made day-dream” has often been made
and shaped by fiction.
Consequently, narrative fragments may appear in the dream, and the
dream as a whole may be cast, misleadingly, as a coherent narrative. Freud
warns:
In general one must avoid seeking to explain one part of the manifest
dream by another, as though the dream had been coherently conceived
and was a logically arranged narrative. On the contrary, it is as a rule like
a piece of breccia, composed of various fragments of rock held together
by a kind of binding medium, so that the designs that appear on it do not
belong to the original rock embedded in it.1
Peter Schwenger78
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
The “designs” on the dream’s fragments may of course very well be narrative
designs, detached from their original coherency and jumbled. Narrative
debris, in fact—and also a mode reminiscent of the way the child jumbles
conventional narrative order. Piaget’s description of child narratives as
intermediate between a plot’s conventional mode of ordering and that of
dreams begins to deteriorate. For the dream ordering and the child’s mode
of ordering blur into each other; and neither is free of narrative elements,
fragmented though these may be. Finally there is the “binding medium” by
which the fragments are held together in their incoherent cohesion: is this
too a species of narrative principle? If so, it is disconcertingly less concrete
than Freud’s comparison would have us believe. The space we are
considering begins to take on the paradoxical qualities of a classic
deconstruction, as binaries break down and into each other. Dream is no
longer opposed to narrative, since its components may themselves be
narrative fragments; and when the surface narrative of the dream’s manifest
content is refused, it is only to be replaced with another narrative—that is,
Freud’s. Moreover, conventional narrative is said to serve the same purpose
as dream—the gratification of childhood wishes. Childhood itself, and its
characteristic ways of ordering the world, is thus not really “liminal”—if by
that we mean standing between two clearly separable realms—nor is it
“intermediate” as Piaget calls it. Difference has taken on the characteristics
of différance, and the line of argument becomes not only circular, but twisted
like a Möbius strip.
If such paradoxes of the narrative of debris are implied by Cornell’s
work, they also play themselves out in works by others, who often
acknowledge his influence. Elizabeth Bishop, for instance, constructed boxes
of her own in homage to Cornell.2 An homage of a different sort is her
translation of Octavio Paz’s poem to Cornell, “Objects and Apparitions.” It
appears in Geography III, a collection that itself adapts debris: the questions
asked in a discarded geography primer are used as the book’s epigraph,
acquiring in their new context a disconcerting poetic power. A similar
adaptation occurs in Cornell’s work, according to Paz’s poem: “refuse of
every moment, used” turns into “cages for infinity”; and “marbles, buttons,
thimbles, dice,/ pins, stamps, and glass beads” tell “tales of the time.” Time
and infinity interpenetrate in the apparitional state evoked by Cornell’s
objects. He has created a
Theatre of the spirits:
objects putting the laws
of identity through hoops.
Dream Narratives of Debris 79
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
Identity makes these jumps because here nothing is one thing only:
A comb is a harp strummed by the glance
of a little girl
born dumb.
The apparitions evoked by these objects populate dramas played out in each
spectator’s “theatre of the spirits”: Cornell’s stated aim in his boxes is to
invite the spectator to “elicit further dreams and musings if such he might
care to do” (Cornell, cited in Ades 33).
Nothing is one thing only, as well, in Elizabeth Bishop’s curious prose
poem “12 O’Clock News.” Her subject matter is the midnight debris of her
own writing desk, which becomes transformed: the gooseneck lamp becomes
a full moon; the typewriter becomes a terraced escarpment; the typewriter
eraser becomes a fallen unicyclist-courier “with the thick, bristling black
hair typical of the indigenes.” In part this piece is a witty description of the
writer’s desk as a battleground. For instance, a large rectangular field, “dark-
speckled,” baffles “our aerial reconnaissance”: is it, we are asked, “an airstrip?
a cemetery?” Potentially both, once the object is identified as a typed sheet,
whose words may either take off or lie lifeless as tombs. But this piece is
also, as the title indicates, a news broadcast, reproducing the glib and
patronizing language of journalists. We are presented with a dugout on the
plain full of dead soldiers, all wearing white camouflage uniforms properly
meant to be used in mountain warfare. This, we are told, “gives further
proof, if proof were necessary, either of the childishness and hopeless
impracticality of this inscrutable people, our opponents, or of the sad
corruption of their leaders.” The “proof” becomes less convincing when we
realize that the dugout is an ashtray, and the dead soldiers in white are
cigarette butts. Bishop may here be satirizing American attitudes to her
adopted Brazil, attitudes engendered by the interpretive narratives of the
evening news. Finally, there is the element of play, surrealist but also childlike.
Like the child, the poet “creates a world of [her] own, or, rather, re-arranges
the things of [her] world in a new way.” But Bishop does this not without
irony, not without a deep distrust of the very narrative thread that she spins
out of her desk’s debris.
A similar distrust impels Edward Gorey to create The Inanimate Tragedy
(Fig. 1). Like much of his other work, this is a sly satire of narrative, especially
its more melodramatic nineteenth-century versions. The drama here is
enacted by a cast of characters that includes the No. 37 Penpoint, the Glass
Marble, the Two-Holed Button, the Half-Inch Thumbtack, the Knotted String,
the Four-Holed Button, and a chorus of Pins and Needles. Our tragedy opens
Peter Schwenger80
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
with the chorus exclaiming “Death and Distraction! Destruction and
Debauchery!” At regular intervals the action will be interrupted with similar
exclamations, though these are not always entirely successful: “Discomfort
and Damage! Doom and Discrepancy!” The reiterated D’s order this litany—
but not without the twist of nonsense found in Carroll’s “Cabbages and
Kings” or certain alphabet books (like Graeme Base’s Animalia) which make
“alphabetical order” seem an oxymoron. The pins and needles presumably
reflect the state of suspense in which we are to be kept. However, suspense
(a pleasurable sense of non-knowing) modulates to bewilderment (a less
pleasurable version of the same thing), as the next frame tells us “Almost at
once the No. 37 Penpoint returned to the Featureless Expanse.” Almost at
once after what? Returned after what exit? We have here a mad in medias res,
which is never resolved in retrospect. And it only gets worse. The large cast
of characters are playing out a drama to which we do not have access. It’s
not just that we don’t have the answers; we don’t even know the questions.
At intervals X will tell Y what has happened, or make known to them what
has occurred, or acquaint them with what has transpired—all without
revealing particulars. Nobody tells us anything. Yet every frame of this drama
seems to be fraught with significance, even while the frames don’t always
link up with one another. Not only are the characters of this tragedy bits of
debris; narrative elements themselves have become a kind of bric-a-brac
that can be willfully shuffled on the whatnot.
The resulting narrative is once again reminiscent of Piaget’s description
of children’s narratives where “causal relationships are rarely expressed,
but are generally indicated by a simple juxtaposition of the related terms”
(107). Gorey’s narrative is also reminiscent of the sense of significance
attaching to the most jumbled dreams, and the way they make leaps that
seem logical at the time, but utterly disconnected upon conscious reflection.
Indeed the “Featureless Expanse” that provides the setting for this tragedy
may be the one familiar to us from the dream paintings of Salvador Dali and
Yves Tanguy. Another fearless illogicality is the scene in which “The Glass
Marble, mistaking the No 37 Penpoint for the Four-Holed Button, pushed it
into the Yawning Chasm.” Leaving aside the question of how anyone could
mistake a penpoint for a button, we note the deliberate avoidance of the far
more logical confusion between the Two-Holed Button and the Four-Holed
Button. These inexplicable mistakes are juxtaposed to the “fatal mistake”
that is a familiar narrative motif. In narrative, though, elements of chance
and the arbitrary only contribute to a tighter ordering of the narrative pattern.
Even when death and destruction hold sway, as in the last act of Hamlet, the
Dream Narratives of Debris 81
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
Illustration by Edward Gorey from “The Inanimate Tragedy,” © Estate of Edward Gorey.
All rights reserved.
Peter Schwenger82
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
tragedy is restful, for we sense that the machine is working as it should.
Here, as one object after another dutifully falls or flings itself into the Yawning
Chasm, quite a different effect comes about. The arbitrariness of the
convention itself is exposed; so that as the Chorus of Pins and Needles joins
all the other characters in the Yawning Chasm, we cannot help feeling that
the debris of narrative itself has just executed a final mise en abîme.
Bric-à-brac, breccia, bricolage . . . . Claude Lévi-Strauss provides yet
another case of a narrative of debris—for that is what his most famous
comparison comes down to. Speculating on how the sacred narratives of
the tribe are composed, Lévi-Strauss finds the process to be like that of the
bricoleur, the odd-jobs man who keeps on hand the dismantled and left-over
parts of every gadget or machine he has ever worked on. Out of this jumble
he selects the components he needs to create a gadget suited to a particular
task—regardless of what task those parts were meant to perform in the first
place. The myth-maker’s narrative invention is similar: he may take from
other contexts images, symbols, narrative fragments, arranging them to
express a tension or a desired resolution that is psychological as much as it
is cultural—it is as if the myth is the culture’s dream.
This process seems to be homologous to Freud’s principles of dream
construction: bricolage and breccia are both images of the way fragments
from other contexts can be reassembled into significance by an elusive
“binding medium” that is ultimately a mental operation. It is the task of
both the psychoanalyst and the structuralist to bring that elusive mental
process to light. Indeed, some of their methods are similar. For Lévi-Strauss,
an important idea is one that occurs repeatedly in the narrative: “The function
of repetition is to render the structure of the myth apparent” (Structural
Anthropology I, 229). For Freud, “the ideas which are most important among
the dream-thoughts will almost certainly be those which occur most often
in them” (Interpretation 306). Both proceed by resisting the narrative coherence
of the surface, instead establishing associations among elements of the dream
that will ultimately reveal a deeper coherence—though their method of
establishing these associations is significantly different. Finally, in both cases,
the moment that analysis has achieved coherence, this hard-won narrative
is swallowed up by a continuing narrative evolution, thus once again
becoming a fragment of a newly elusive whole. Lévi-Strauss’s synchronic
analysis of the Oedipus myth, for instance (“The Structural Study of Myth”
in Structural Anthropology), must be situated in a diachronic space consisting
of all the variations of that myth through time. Of these variations, Freud’s
must be one, as Lévi-Strauss admits. And however fundamental Freud’s
Dream Narratives of Debris 83
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
Oedipus complex may be in his psychoanalytic theory, when it is detected
in dreams it is always through fragments and tangents, entangled with the
residues of the previous day. In short, narrative returns to a state of debris. If
the analyst succeeds in disentangling the dream, his success may become
matter for more dreaming: Freud describes several dreams that seem to have
been designed to disprove his theory of dream as wish-fulfillment—and
thus to fulfill the dreamer’s wish that the theory be disproved. Freud himself,
that is, becomes a fragment in his patient’s dream narrative, often being
assimilated with other significant fragments such as the father. And this
process does not end until the mind does. Freud himself concedes that
there is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream
which has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during the
work of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-thoughts
which cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to our
knowledge of the content of the dream. This is the dream’s navel, the spot
where it reaches down into the unknown.3
What he is decribing is a mise-en-abîme with a vengeance; into it
disappears the authority of Freud’s narratives as well as Lévi-Strauss’s, and
indeed the authority of narrative itself, conceived as coherence, structure,
order—as well as linguistically conceived versions of narratology.
Admittedly, structures and sub-structures will be found in any narrative.
But these coherences are only recognized as such through their contexts,
and are to that degree fragments; they are bound together by a force that is
allied less to grammar than to dream. Even this distinction becomes blurred
when Lévi-Strauss’s linguistically-based model is seen to share some of the
same problems as Freud’s dream rebuses.
The acknowledged master of the narrative of debris is Donald
Barthelme. It is Barthelme that Jonathan Culler uses to make a transition to
literary criticism at the conclusion of his essay on Michael Thompson’s
Rubbish Theory. Thompson, a sociologist, argues that rubbish occupies a
cultural space between the transient and the durable—a kind of holding bin
where any particular piece of rubbish may under certain conditions be
reclaimed as a collectible, that is, as something with durable value. Of course
not only collectibles have durable value: anything in the category of the
aesthetic makes that claim or at least aspires to it. In a novel like Snow White
Barthelme stakes his claim through rubbish. This becomes most explicit at a
point when one of the seven “dwarfs,” Dan, pontificates about the work
done by the dwarfs at a plant that manufactures plastic buffalo humps, and
its relation to overall trends in trash:
Peter Schwenger84
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
Now you’re probably familiar with the fact that the per-capita production
of trash in this country is up from 2.75 pounds per day in 1920 to 4.5
pounds per day in 1965, the last year for which we have figures, and is
increasing at the rate of about four percent a year. Now that rate will
probably go up, because it’s been going up, and I hazard that we may very
well soon reach a point where it’s 100 percent. Now at such a point, you
will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this “trash”
to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it’s 100 percent,
right? And there can no longer be any question of “disposing” of it, because
it’s all there is, and we will simply have to learn how to “dig” it—that’s
slang, but peculiarly appropriate here. So that’s why we’re in humps, right
now, more really from a philosophical point of view than because we find
them a great moneymaker. They are “trash,” and what in fact could be
more useless or trashlike? It’s that we want to be on the leading edge of
this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that’s why
we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be
seen as a model of the trash phenomenon. (103-4)
The aspects of language that Dan refers to here need not be confined to
the linguistic “stuffing” he has spoken of earlier (e.g. “you know,” “sort of,”
“like”). Even the “durable” language of art can partake of the trash
phenomenon when it is detached from its context, thrown upon the great
slag heap of culture. So in Barthelme’s novel we have numerous
appropriations like “Then he became melancholy, melancholy as a gib cat,
melancholy as a jugged hare” (123) –this pillaged from Henry IV, Part 1. And
even when no direct quotation is involved, Barthelme’s sentences seem to
quote themselves, standing away from the page in self-conscious
construction. No mode is sustained long enough to become transparent.
Unpredictable juxtapositions, quirkings of the banal (“Spare the bat and the
child rots”) create a Chaplinesque comedy of language.4 And all this becomes
possible when language is viewed not as a transparent window to
signification but as a heap of disparate and concrete entities. Some
narratologists have hoped that the structures of language could provide a
model that would reveal the fundamental structures of narrative. But
Barthelme’s use of language implies that words do not have a stabilizing
objectivity, but rather the randomness of objects, objects that may be picked
up, turned around and—freed from their original connotations and
contexts—assembled in a comic bricolage. In one of his most quoted
pronouncements, he asserted that “Fragments are the only forms I trust”
(Symposium 26).
All this, too, is dreamlike. For, as Freud asserts, “words are frequently
treated in dreams as though they were things, and for that reason they are
apt to be combined in just the same way as presentations of things”
Dream Narratives of Debris 85
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
(Interpretation 295-96). Things, of course, need not be related to each other
by any principle other than juxtaposition. So when in Snow White a dream is
narrated (124), it does not stand out in contrast to anything that could be
denominated a waking reality. Its curious logic is the same as that of the
novel as a whole.
Barthelme, like Bishop, wrote an evocation of Cornell’s aesthetic world;
it combines an uncanny, dreamlike quality with a precision of reference that
is very canny indeed. Here it is in its entirety:
Cornell
I put a name in an envelope, and sealed the envelope, and put that envelope
in another envelope with a spittlebug and some quantity of boric acid,
and put that envelope in a still larger envelope which contained also a
woman tearing her gloves to tatters; and put that envelope in the mail to
Fichtelgebirge. At the Fichtelgebirge Post Office I asked if there was mail
for me, with a mysterious smile the clerk said, “Yes,” I hurried with the
envelope to London, arriving with snow, and put the envelope in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, bowing to the Curators in the Envelope
Room, the wallpaper hanging down in thick strips. I put the Victoria and
Albert Museum in a still larger envelope which I placed in the program of
the Royal Danish Ballet, in the form of an advertisement for museums,
boric acid, wallpaper. I put the program of the Royal Danish Ballet into
the North Sea for two weeks. Then, I retrieved it, it was hanging down in
thick strips, I sent it to a machine-vask on H.C. Andersens Boulevard,
everything came out square and neat, I was overjoyed. I put the square,
neat package in a safe place, and put the safe place in a vault designed by
Caspar David Friedrich, German romantic landscape painter of the last
century. I slipped the vault into a history of art (Insel Verlag, Frankfurt,
1975). But, in a convent library on the side of a hill near a principal city of
Montana, it fell out of the history of art into a wastebasket, a thing I could
not have predicted. I bound the wastebasket in stone, with a matchwood
shroud covering the stone, and placed it in the care of Charles the Good,
Charles the Bold, and Charles the Fair. They stand juggling cork balls before
the many-times-encased envelope, whispering names which are not the
right one. I put the kings into a new blue suit; it walked away from me
very confidently. (Teachings 112-13)
Structurally, the piece echoes a practice of Cornell’s described by Mary Ann
Caws: “A phrase or short text would be wrapped in an envelope with a tiny
picture, and that envelope placed within another, and so on, in an intricate
series of infoldings” (451). In Barthelme’s homage the clarity of this series of
containments is continually dissolved by surreal incongruities, made up of
typical preoccupations of Cornell such as nineteenth-century ballet and Hans
Christian Andersen, antique advertisements and weathered wallpaper. Nor
does all this containing secure meaning for us. The “name” hidden away
Peter Schwenger86
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
from us at the start might be Cornell’s, but Cornell is just as likely to be the
contents of the “new blue suit.” And if that suit walks away “very
confidently,” the confidence is all on its side, not ours. Similarly the movement
“away” is another version of the direction taken by all that mental flotsam
and jetsam. Barthelme, perhaps alerted by his own practice, has here
fashioned an accurate parallel to Cornell’s art. For if Cornell’s boxes imply
elusive narratives, and invite the reader to provide others, they do not contain
narrative. Rather, they open up narrative to the unpredictable and endless
vagaries of dream: “cages for infinity,” Paz calls them. The paradox is doubled
when we remember that not infinity but specific and limited debris makes
up the contents of the box. What can be characterized as infinite is the
narrative-making impulse in the mind, continually elicited by the box’s
objects.
The narratives that are made in accordance with this impulse have less
to do with “meaning” than with seduction. I take this term from Jean
Baudrillard, who sees seduction as a fundamental rule, a rule opposed to
law:
We are called upon at every moment to seduce (that is, to lure to immolate
and to destroy, to subvert and to ravish) that which the law summons us to
produce. The law imposes production upon us, but the secret rule, never
spoken, hidden behind the law, imposes seduction upon us, and that rule
is stronger than the law. (133)
While Baudrillard here emphasizes seduction’s power to destroy that which
production puts forward (forward etymologically: pro), seduction has its
own version of generative power –not straightforward as in a line, but
flickering through a series of tangents, touching at one point only and then
drawing apart (apart etymologically: se) through an infinite and
unpredictable range of possibilities. Seduction is provocative: it calls out in
us something, many things, beyond the law. So the spectator of Cornell’s
work is invited to think, literally, outside the box, to “elicit further dreams
and musings.”
Narrative must partake in what Baudrillard says of writing in general:
“it’s nothing but the projection of an arbitrary code, an arbitrary system (an
invention of the rules of a game) where things come to be taken in their fatal
development” (154). Those things may be words, words functioning as
things—the way they do, according to Freud, in dreams “where words,
emptied of their meaning, begin to function as things, and are all brought
back to the same primordial, brute, material state, to link together in their
material imminence, senseless (but not random) beyond all syntax and all
Dream Narratives of Debris 87
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
principle of coherence” (Baudrillard 154). In short, dream as debris. What
Baudrillard is describing here goes some way toward explaining how things
may have a “fatal development” beyond syntax and coherence: they link
together in ways that inhere in their individual material natures (and are
thus fatal or fated) rather than in accordance with some overarching
organizing principle. But what, then, is the nature of their relation with
coherence, with the arbitrary code, arbitrary system, to which things come,
it seems, in order “to be taken in their fatal development”?
To ask this is to ask about the nature of the narrative game. The rules of
that game are not meant to produce knowledge but to hold it off—to delay
production long enough for seduction to have its effect. Structures of narrative
slow down the acquisition of meaning so that the more rapid play of the
mind has time to flicker fitfully, to play in the spaces where “meaning” is
not. This is doubtless something of what Baudrillard intends when he says
“going faster than the conceptual connections—this is the secret of writing”
(162). So the debris that makes up Gorey’s “Inanimate Tragedy” is not only
that of material objects but also that of narrative structures—structures that
almost invariably belong to what Roland Barthes would call the hermeneutic
code, whose function is to delay the too rapid advent of meaning (75-76).
Gorey gives us reversals, mistaken identities, miscommunications and
secrets, but here these are entirely divorced from the specious promise of
“truth.” In place of truth he gives us play, a play beyond the rules of the
game, or rather a play with the rules of the game. And this is perhaps the
most fundamental pleasure of the text:
Incalculable connections are the stuff of our dreams, but also of our daily
bread. We like nothing more than this crazy imbalance of cause and effect
–it opens fabulous horizons on our origins and on our potential power.
They say that seduction is a strategy. Nothing could be more wrong.
Seduction is a matter of these unexpected connections that any strategy
can at best only attempt to reproduce. (Baudrillard 155)
Cornell describes his box as a game, though its rules are significantly
“forgotten”—or as a toy that is “philosophical” in that it plays with the
relations between physical debris and the narratives that arise out of their
enigmatic conjunction. But I have been suggesting throughout this essay
that these narratives may not be as different as one might imagine from the
physical debris that evoked them. The work is on the one hand assembled
out of narrative fragments to create an apparent structure of meaning. On
the other hand, the momentum of meaning must be delayed enough so that
the plot’s machinery falls apart, from moment to moment returning to
Peter Schwenger88
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
narrative debris. And in the spaces between these fragments, a movement
of another sort can arise: not production but seduction, the flickering
combinatory play of dream.
Mount St. Vincent University, Halifax
The research for this essay was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Notes
1. “Dreamwork,” 181-82. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud uses the same analogy of
“breccia, in which largish blocks of various kinds of stone are cemented together by a
binding medium” (419) to explain the fragmented nature of speeches experienced in
dreams.
2. Two boxes are illustrated in Elizabeth Bishop, Exchanging Hats: Paintings, pp. 48-51.
3. Interpretation of Dreams 525. As the passage continues is becomes clear that Freud’s
metaphor for this “tangle of dream-thoughts” is rhizomatic:
The dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from
the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are bound to branch
out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought.
It is at some point where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-
wish grows up, like a mushroom out of its mycelium.
Compare Deleuze and Guattari’s “Introduction: Rhizome” in A Thousand Plateaus, where
a rhizomatic structure is played against the linguistic model of Chomsky (and by
extension of many narratologists). Deleuze and Guattari use a term that is also used in
this essay, and for similar purposes, when they speak of “the book as assemblage . . . a
rhizome-book” (23).
4. Cf. Lance Olsen: “His words are Chaplins and Keatons. They slip on themselves, trip
over their own feet in an attempt to mean something stable” (12) As in Chaplin, however,
there is an anarchic grace and wacky creativity that somehow makes the “stable” seem
very dull.
Works Cited
Ades, Dawn. “The Transcendental Surrealism of Joseph Cornell,” in Joseph Cornell, ed.
Kynaston McShine. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980, 15-41.
Barthelme, Donald. Snow White. New York: Scribner Paperback, 1996
——. “A Symposium on Fiction.” Shenandoah 27:2 (1976), 3-31.
——. The Teachings of Don B. Ed. Kim Herzinger. New York: Turtle Bay, 1992.
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974.
Baudrillard, Jean. Fatal Strategies. Trans. Philip Beitchman. New York; Semiotext(e), 1990.
Bishop, Elizabeth. Exchanging Hats: Paintings. Ed. William Benton. New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1996.
——. Geography III. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1976.
Cornell, Joseph. Joseph Cornell’s Theatre of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files. Mary
Ann Caws, ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1993.
Dream Narratives of Debris 89
SubStance # 100, Vol. 32, no. 1, 2003
Culler, Jonathan. “Junk and Rubbish: A Semiotic Approach.” Diacritics 15.3 (1985), 2-12.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans.
Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Freud, Sigmund. “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.” In The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey, vol. 9, 141-53.
London: Hogarth Press, 1959.
——. “The Dream-Work.” In Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1915-1916). Vols. 15-
16 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans.
James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1959.
——. The Interpretation of Dreams. Vols. 4-5 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1959.
Gorey, Edward. Amphigorey Too. New York: Perigee, 1975.
Keller, Marjorie. The Untutored Eye: Childhood in the Films of Cocteau, Cornell, and Brakhage.
Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthroplogy. 2 vols. Trans. Claire Jacobson & Brooke
Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963.
Olsen, Lance. “Slumgullions, or Some Notes toward Trying to Introduce Donald Barthelme.”
Review of Contemporary Fiction 11.2 (1991), 7-15.
Piaget, Jean. The Language and Thought of the Child. London: Routledge, 1959.
Ratcliffe, Carter. “Joseph Cornell: Mechanic of the Ineffable,” in Joseph Cornell, ed. Kynaston
McShine. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980, 43-67.
Ruskin, John. Praeteritia. Boston: D. Estes, 1890.
Thompson, Michael. Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1979.

The Actor Working with Archetypes By Flloyd Kennedy

2009-09-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

The Actor Working with Archetypes

By Flloyd Kennedy

SOME DEFINITIONS

… forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth, as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous individual products of unconscious origin. (Jung, qtd in Campbell, Hero 18)

Archetypes (mid 16th century via Latin from Greek arkhetupon “something moulded first as a model”, from arkhe – “primitive” + tupus – “a model”) ("Archetype" 34) are – for purposes of this exercise - the forms which inspire "the basic images of ritual, mythology and vision" (Campbell, Hero). In Jungian terms, they are tendencies to form representations of a motif, closely related to instincts; they are manifestations of physiological urges that have been perceived by the senses (Jung 57-80).

The term archetype, in this sense, describes neither an external, independently existing entity nor is it "meant to denote an inherited idea, but rather an inherited mode of functioning" (Jung, qtd in Stevens 17-18). The symbols, ideas, feelings and behaviours that the archetype gives rise to "occur as a result of an innate predisposition" (Stevens 18).

Campbell renders them available to us in a slightly more tangible form, suggesting that archetypes are the models for the beings who inhabit mythology, and myth functions to bring forth "a sense of awe before the mystery of being... to render a cosmology... to support the current social order", and "to initiate the individual into the orders of his own psyche, guiding him towards his own spiritual enrichment and realization" (Campbell, Masks 519-21). Mythology would appear to facilitate and to inspire the ways in which artists communicate their society’s hopes and aspirations back to themselves (Laughlin 715), as well as revealing “hidden processes in reality relative to the human condition” (Laughlin 729). Tendencies to manifest oneself as, and to recognise Jung's archetypal or Campbell's mythic entities could be understood as "biological - built into the wiring of every human being" (Vogler 34). We would appear to be born with a facility which allows us to classify friends, enemies, carers, challengers. The ability to categorize, which derives from this facility, rescues us from the confusion of having to identify each new individual we meet without the benefit of prior clues. The society we are born into will affect our attitudes and decisions, but the ability to undertake such a decision making process appears to be an innate part of our cognitive processes (Damasio 131-33).

Archetypes manifest themselves within human consciousness by means of the appearance of certain qualities that are common to particular mythic characters of legend and folklore. For example, the Trickster-figure can be recognized in the rhymes, games, stories and songs of many different societies, including hunter-gatherer, pastoral and agricultural societies (Pelton 5) and also within urban literary and cinematic traditions (Goldman 230). Nanabush (Algonquian, North America), Ananse the Spider (Ashanti, Ghana), Loki (Scandinavia) and Iba Tiri (PNG), Homer Simpson (USA) exhibit similar qualities: they are predominately devious, charming, crude, antisocial and self-seeking, but their tricks and misdemeanours often serve, perhaps unwittingly, to benefit the society they seek to undermine (Goldman 232; Pelton 2-3). Bucking the system is understood, paradoxically, as part of the system.

Of course our intellectual judgment always seeks to define the archetype in unambiguous terms and so overlooks the essential, for its most characteristic feature, which we must above all bear in mind, is its ambivalence. (Jacobi 59)

Once an archetype has approached the edges of perception, it is impossible to consider it as isolated from another archetype; the edges – as it were – are blurred. Individual archetypes cannot be “isolated from each other in the unconscious, but are in a state of contamination, of the most complete, mutual interpenetration and interfusion” (Jung, qtd in Neumann 7). The archetype is “essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived…” (Jung, qtd in Gallo 397). It is this paradoxical, ambivalent quality which seems to relate to the kind of dilemma faced by the actor, who is in some sense both herself and the character, or not herself and yet herself, and whose words are both hers and not hers (because they are the author's).

Archetypes can be described, explained and recognised but somehow the more precisely one attempts to define them individually, the more they lose their archetypal quality and become either stereotypes, or particular individuals. Because they are 'tendencies' or 'patterns', their manifestation in a definable form ceases to be an archetype, and becomes a particular manifestation. The goddess Diana manifests the archetypal qualities of the Huntress, but she is not, in or of herself, the archetype Huntress, which is "irrepresentable" (Jung, qtd in Neumann 6).

The issue of whether there really are such things as archetypes is a matter for debate, however, the process of working in the manner proposed does not require archetypes to exist, merely that you agree to work 'as if’ they exist, in a situation of common consensus as to what they may be. The performer who chooses to work in this way embarks upon a creative process of invention, to "attend to the transformation without being misled by it" (Rapp 141). When we imagine ourselves to be 'as if’ we are something, or someone other than the way in which we usually think of ourselves, we draw upon an inbuilt (“hard-wired” according to Vogler) ability to conceive of the imagined entity (Goldman 9). To imagine something unimaginable is a paradox. It is the equivalent of "realising unrealisable desires" (Goldman 11). The actor endeavouring to imagine an object or a future event is in the process of dis-covering something which already exists (Rapp 142); she is "searching" for the experience of that event (Donnellan 21). This does not explain or remove the paradox. Ultimately, there is no point in trying to remove the paradox. If we accept its existence - and its right to exist - then we are free to transform.

When we attempt to define ourselves we tend almost invariably to limit ourselves. The self to be defined is so complex and unique it is virtually impossible to find a reference point with which to draw an analogy, "an evanescent reference state... continuously and consistently reconstructed" (Damasio 240), slightly or hugely different from moment to moment. It shifts its emphasis, or at least it appears to, because as soon as we turn the searchlight of our gaze upon it, it becomes what we are looking for, something akin to a sense of identity. The defined self who emerges through this process is not static, cannot be contained, packaged and regurgitated. It is a new form of self that will continue to shift and defy definition for as long as the journey continues. Not 'new' in the sense of arriving pristine, unconnected from anything which has gone before, it is new in the sense that a new moment has been allowed to come into existence, new combinations of feelings and movement and understanding allow this same body/heart/mind/voice (person) to appear to its audience as someone else, someone they may never have met before, but with whom they may have something in common.

The actor who is thinking about remembering her lines or decisions made in the rehearsal room, or who is consciously presenting aspects of her training, is unlikely to be delivering the performance of a lifetime. The actor who surrenders herself to the experience of the moment within the situation of the play is in a position to be interesting to the audience at the very least. As we speak, we articulate just that thought we are in the process of thinking, the one which gives rise to the word, but which has now (in the instant that follows) been superseded by another thought/word. When performing written text, in order to articulate the author's thought/words the actor needs to engage in the "journey between finding the articulatory truth of someone else's shaped thought in a carefully worded line and finding the reference point to a truth of our own" (Wade 138).

To attempt to embody an archetype is to attempt to embody a paradox: honest dishonesty; chaotic tranquillity; knowing ignorance; pure evil; courageous vulnerability; or any other combination of apparent opposites. To attempt to embody an 'archetype' which does not contain contradictory qualities is probably tantamount to attempting to embody a stereotype. A stereotype can be reduced to an unambiguous, non-contradictory model. An archetype will always be capable of manifesting contradictory and transformative qualities.

adapted from Archetypes and the Performance of Text

ã Flloyd Kennedy 2004.

WORKING WITH ARCHETYPES

Figures 1 and 2 at the end of this handout are an approximation of the way these particular archetypes can be introduced. It will be apparent that there is a danger that these descriptions, when laid down in black and white, could be prescriptive. They should be seen as no more than a guide, an imaginative framework within which to work, a device to remind you of the physical experience you encountered in the class

At every stage of the describing process, remember that these are only ideas, images, that there is no right or wrong response to them, that you can never succeed in becoming an actual archetype, that the archetypal qualities you strive to embody are already within you, and that each individual will manifest these qualities in slightly different ways.

THE PHYSICAL QUALITY

Imagining the physical features with clarity and precision will help you to achieve clarity in the execution of the resulting physical quality. Observe and recognise the most delicate and subtle physical shifts in the body as well as the more obvious ones, so that you may begin to distinguish one state from another and to appreciate the subtle shifting process that is going on all the time in the living body.

The aim of this process is not to ‘get it’, but to strive for it; what we actually want to ‘get’ is not to be a particular archetype, which is impossible, but to experience the qualities which that archetype manifests itself as, and – even more importantly – to train ourselves in the art of letting go of any sense of failure; to speed up as much as possible the process of ‘having another go’ whenever we feel we have ‘lost’ what we were striving for. We are trying to balance (metaphorically speaking) on the point of a needle, to reside for as long as possible (even though it may only be for a nanosecond) in the place of no-place, “the void” as John Wright calls it (J. Wright), and to strive constantly to return there.

THE VOCAL QUALITY

The open, energised, flexible and fully embodied voice which is accessed or rediscovered in your warm up is part of the physical process. Just as the quality of your movement reflects the archetypal qualities you are aiming for, so will your voice reflect, or resonate with those qualities. Rather than “build it, and it will come”, let us work with “allow it, and it will be”.

THE MANTRA

The 'secret' of the mantras, that which underlies the intention of each mantra, is to say what one means and to mean what one says – and nothing else. The aim is to own the words utterly, there must be no other agenda, no pretending that they are one's own words: they are one's own words. The Mantra is not explanatory, it is not insistent or particularly self-assured; it is simply a statement of fact. Once this has been experienced, it is possible to recognise the difference between this quality/feeling of being "behind the words" (Berry) and the feeling of 'doing', or 'acting' the words. Say what you need to say for no other reason than that it happens to be so in that instant.

It is essential to strip away any 'meaning' or interpretation which is extraneous, and that means any interpretation over and above the simplest 'meaning' which the words of the mantra contain. Words already have ‘meaning/s’, whatever we do or don’t do to them. They already mean what they mean – to you, or to a listener. When I say: “mean what you say, say what you mean” I want you to allow the words to mean whatever they are going to mean, in spite of you, at that moment in time as you utter them. Allow yourself to DISCOVER how they sound, and what the sound feels like (to you, in that moment) as you say them. Allow the words to be articulated from whatever physical, emotional and mental state you happen to be in at the time. Trust yourself to be capable of this apparently unconsidered act.

The process of embodying an archetype is constantly changing; when it stops changing, stereotype results. Rather than stating “I’ve got it” when you feel the shift into a new state of physical, vocal and/or emotional being, note the sensation of transformation, acknowledge what you are doing and feeling and allow yourself to continue to transform, to respond with new feelings and actions. The ‘archetype’ is alive, it is you, you are alive and in a constant process of transformation. This is your opportunity to observe yourself in that process, to recognise when you either consciously or inadvertently block it, or stick in a particular state, so that you may work at letting go again.

Figure 1 The Masks

Feature Hero Fool Huntress Maiden Trickster Hermit
Forehead High, strong, ridged; slightly knitted brow Lumpy, bumpy, with a strong vertical line between brows High, smooth and strong Soft, smooth Low, broad Deeply furrowed, full of pain, tension
Eyes Clear, wide, far-sighted, some tension lines around eyes Hooded eyes, large upper lids, strong creases outside of eyes (laugh lines) Highly arched eyebrows, open alert eyes Wide, rounded brows, almond shaped eyes, hooded lids, sidelong look Protuberant, almost platform like eyebrows, one higher than the other; asymmetrical, quizzical quality; large wide eyes Heavily ridged brows, smooth, filled in eye sockets (he is blind)
Nose Handsome, strong, slightly flared nostrils Slightly skewed, broad nostrils Straight Pert, upturned Small and neat, slightly skewed Slightly hooked
Cheeks Deeply furrowed Broad, bulbous, puffy, droopy cheeks high wide cheekbones (symmetrical face) High, full cheekbones, (attractive, youthful face) Prominent cheekbones Wrinkled (old face, with lots of pain and tension)
Mouth well shaped firm, not smiling Wide upper lip, mouth slightly open, lower lip sagging but not sad Wide, generous mouth, full lips, ready to smile Cupid-bow lips, very full, potentially pouting lower lip Raking mouth held (mm, mm) Sunken lips
Chin Strong, cleft no chin firm chin small, well-shaped, slightly dimpled chin cleft chin, neither strong nor weak Tense cleft jaw
(adapted from “The Voices of the Archetypes of Myth”, (J. Wright, and Frankie Armstrong)

Figure 2 The Qualities

Archetype Centre of Gravity Mantra Specificity
HERO High – lower chest “Of course I can” Walk tall, willingly shoulder immense responsibilities without regard to personal cost; have a keen sense of the correct way of doing things; only draw your weapon if you intend to use it (and always strike true); act from the purest of possible motives; polite and well-mannered; simplest action is construed as conflict – it takes immense strength to be frivolous.
FOOL Very low - groin area “I don’t understand” Soften the knees, lower the centre of gravity, make a low crude gesture in front of the groin and laugh; focus on objects in the room without recognition; give body away to gravity; be lost inside your head, in a world of your own, with a very short attention span; emotionally open, uninhibited; high pain threshold.
HUNTRESS Centre – belly area “I am very strong” Walk tall, lightly, run and leap (as if over brooks, or fallen logs in a forest); take pleasure in leaping and listening; feel strong, powerful, with feline stealth and agility; confident of physical powers, confront everything on your own terms, no compromise, no ties, prefers independence; enjoy emotional and physical strength; beholden to no-one and fearing no-one.
MAIDEN High – centre of chest “I’m ready” Slightly incline head to one side, with eye-line towards floor; take small light steps across floor, then rest and smile slightly; change direction with unconscious, natural grace; transformative tendency; living with a secret, on the cusp between innocence and knowing, neither child nor adult; innocence and physical assurance, unaware of sexual potency (hence possible confusion of messages)
TRICKSTER Low – lower belly “Maybe” Smile, move across to a wall and lean; languid; smile through life – ambiguous quality (are you laughing at, or with others? – don’t let on); outwardly charming, amusing, jolly, full of fun; never shows true feelings; highly manipulative.
HERMIT Centre – belly area “I know” Think of space beneath pelvis; move around room with strong sense of pain in the body, change direction on the sound of the secret message which only you can hear – and which you must act upon immediately; vary responses (urgent, delicate); be skilled at being blind; preoccupied with world of shadows, spirits, messages; erratic and unpredictable; detached from physical quest; challenge is to stay on the path; aware of ALL, beyond dogma.
(adapted from “The Voices of the Archetypes of Myth” (J. Wright, and Frankie Armstrong)

Bibliography
"Archetype", Origin. Oxford Dictionary of English. 2nd ed, 2003.

Berry, Cicely. Text in Action. London: Virgin, 2001.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1949.

---. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. New York: Viking Press, 1964.

Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994.

Donnellan, Declan. The Actor and the Target. London: Theatre Communications Group, 2002.

Goldman, L R. Child's Play: Myth, Mimesis and Make-Believe. Oxford: Berg, 1998.

Jung, Carl G. "Approaching the Unconscious." Man and His Symbols. Ed. Carl G. Jung and M. -L von Franz. London: Picador, 1978.

Laughlin, Charles D. and C. Jason Throop. "Imagination and Reality: On the Relations between Myth, Consciousness, and the Quantum Sea." Zygon 36 (2001): 709-36.

Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa : A Study of Mythic Irony and Sacred Delight. Hermeneutics, Studies in the History of Religions. 8 vols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980.

Rapp, U. "Simulation and Imagination: Mimesis as Play." Mimesis in Contemporary Theory. Ed. M. Spariosu. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1984. 141-71.

Stevens, Anthony. Archetype: A Natural History of the Self. London: Routledge, 1982.

Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. 2nd rev. ed. London: Pan, 1999.

Wade, Andrew. "What Is a Voice For." Hampton and Acker. 133-41.

Wright, John. "Pathetic Clown." Workshop. The Actors' Centre, London, 2003.

Wright, John, and Frankie Armstrong. The Voices of the Archetypes. Audiocassette. John Wright and Frankie Armstrong, London, 1992.

Ritual, Acting, Play, Healing, and the World.

2009-09-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ritual, Acting, Play, Healing, and the World. by Jane Drake Brody, September, 2007.

This article was prompted by the sudden death of my former student Ricci Anselmi.

Late in August of 2007, before our school year at The Theatre School began, some of our students were rehearsing a production of the Misanthrope. In the cast was a young man with whom I had worked in the previous year. His name was Ricci Anselmi, and he was among the most promising students of his year. He was set to graduate in June of 2008. On a lunch break from rehearsal he was killed riding his skateboard. He had gone to the local snack shop and never returned. At first, the young actors at the rehearsal waited for Ricci to return with no idea that anything had happened four blocks away. Finally, they got word that he had been taken to the hospital and was seriously injured and not expected to recover.

The cast and other students immediately went to the hospital to say their last good-byes. Ricci was not injured physically, his head had struck a curb and his death probably occurred more or less immediately. He bore no scars and rested in the bed as if asleep. The students visiting spontaneously began singing to him, popular songs they knew together, hymns, and songs from school productions. Some danced and some recited poetry. All talked to him as if he were alive to receive their last wishes. All of this in his hospital room.

His death left a deep wide hole in the fabric of our school and it will never be the same.

Two days later, the opening day of school, the theatre school celebrated, as we always have, with a party thrown in the outdoor courtyard that is encompassed by the four sides of our building. Every member of the staff, faculty, and student body attends this picnic, and we cancel the first afternoon of classes for it. In general, this is a time to greet everyone, to rejoice in our love for each other, and for the graduating seniors to begin their campaign to raise funds for the pictures, resumes, and trips they will need for their official entrance into the business. They hold a raffle and provide the entertainment at this event. Ricci had entered school as a freshman with this group of young actors.

Of course, Ricci’s death prompted the administration to question whether such an event would be appropriate. The graduating seniors responded that it was to be made in honor of Ricci.

A somber crowd gathered, with the exception of the new class of freshmen who didn’t really understand what was going on. As we all talked softly and ate our pizza, the graduating seniors full of their trained athleticism bound up onto the raised wooden platform in the corner of the yard. All eleven of them standing together minus their missing brother. They began by once again announcing Ricci’s death for those who hadn’t heard the news, and then gave a brief eulogy. They followed the eulogy with a rap-song co-written for the occasion by the class, with a call and response from the audience. It focused on Ricci’s daredevil life; on his frequent run-ins with authority, and the responding words expected of the audience were something like “Ricci was a bastard who rode his way to heaven”. I am sure it was more profane than this, but my amazed response at the released energy in the courtyard kept me from really knowing anything much--- except that I felt renewed and able to move forward as did everyone in the yard. Ricci began to move from the realm of the human to the gates of the gods. He became a trickster in the minds of all of us and we were somehow given solace because of this and the enormous laughter that reverberated off the walls of the surrounding school as the song took its effect. It was the laughing that did it, not the crying and not the eulogy.

Ricci is still alive in all of our memories, both those who knew him, and for those hapless freshmen who entered our midst when such grief stood upon us. As we left the courtyard, we were all changed both in ourselves with the others who had been at the event.

As a passionate theatre practitioner, I believe that the most fundamental use of our ancient art form is the reconciliation of humanity with itself, with the gods, and therefore with the natural and metaphysical world. That reconciliation seemed to me to have taken place in the courtyard that August. Theatre for me is not necessarily what happens in a designated performing space; it occurs whenever an “actor” and an “audience” willingly appear. This coming-together- spilt, this dualism exists for a certain amount of time and when it dis-appears, the two parts leave each other with a greater appreciation for their shared-ness as well as their separateness. The quality of live theatre itself involves a sensual, nearly fleshly exchange between the spectators and the actors. Whether behind masks as for the ancient Greeks, or behind grease paint, or naked-faced, or dancing in front of a dying youth in a hospital room, actors exist biologically in the same space as the audience but separate from it. As the brilliant British director and acting theoretician Declan Donnellan says, “A theatre is not only a literal space, but also a place where we dream together; not merely a building but a space that is both imaginative and collective.”

Imitation and imagination are the original technologies of learning and remain the methods by which babies learn to survive in the world. The joy of discovery and the necessity of role–enactment are genetic and shared by both humans and many not humans as well. We all play the copycat game. Actors may, through some exceptionally sensitive mirror- neuronic activity continue to “enact,” but everyone is born an actor. For any child to learn, he or she must be curious, attentive, observant, and mimetic. These little scientists test theories of nature and human nature through interactive and imitative play. As the child learns, he or she must be rewarded for success. “Eating, walking, talking, all are developed by copying and applause. Whatever human instinct is latent, it reaches virtuosity only after acute observation, repetition, and performance. Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival.” Thus the making of theatre, mimesis with an audience is one of the primary experiences of early life.

As a child’s experiments and learning begin to bear fruit, the growing consciousness soon discovers that not all discoveries are pleasurable. Some discoveries are painful. Some demand more energy than seems possible. The world begins to expand exponentially and threatens to reel out of control. Some way of capturing it is required. In order to get a handle on things, we codify things, name things, disregard most things, and deny many things, as a response to the painful experience and observation of unpleasantness. We decide against moving onto further research at quite a young age. It is as if we set out purposefully to blind ourselves. As if we decide that we must limit the vastness of human joy and terror, simply to avoid being overwhelmed.

As we begin to darken and focus the lenses of our minds, by accepting certain things into our world and eliminating others, what emerges is what we begin to call a ‘self.’—’Self’ as a reduction of possibility. —’Self’, as a closing down of expansion. As we separate our ‘self’ from the other less rewarding possible “selves” we perform a succession of self- abortions. However, somewhere left in the dark reaches of the brain is the loneliness for those lost others, the ones we left behind, the ones we didn’t become. Perhaps this is the true beginning of existential shame for us, the burying of a multiplicity of potential beings, so that we may stand-alone. The feeling of being alone and “only” begins to take hold, and it too terrifies us. We long to re-unite, not only with the former familial audience, but also with our forgotten potential lives. The actor, Forest Whitaker said the following in his acceptance speech for his Oscar: “...when I first started acting, it was because of my desire to connect to everyone--to that thing inside each of us. That light that I believe exists in all of us. Because acting for me is about believing in that connection and it's a connection so strong, it's a connection so deep, that we feel it. And through our combined belief, we can create a new reality.”

Not only the various forms of theatre, but also religion, dreams, and simple people-watching becomes a means for us to re-visit that which we deserted; to be re-united with a half-forgotten reality if only for a while. The left-behind others about whom I speak, include not only our mourned-for frail other-selves, but all of the strong, single-minded appetites on which we might have built alternative lives and identities, the tyrants, the mischief makers, the saints, the hedonists, the builders, the martyrs, the torturers, the dancers, the executioners, the sensualists, the explorers, the madonnas, the gluttons, the criminals, the lovers. They include the lions and tigers and monkeys and snakes and eagles and elephants and coyotes and dogs we could have been. All of these qualities of ravenous need form the archetypes familiar to us from the legends of many cultures and are hardwired and given faces in our unconscious world. It is truly unfortunate that we live in a more or less One God world; it seems so much more prudent to have many with whom to commune, who are not quite so awesome. Rather like being in a large family where Dad and Mom are so busy just feeding and housing the brood that the sisters and brothers become lesser gods for each other.

Like such a large family, religion and theatre provide the spaces, both actual and metaphoric in which to connect physically, intellectually, and emotionally with our archetypes alongside the equally disconnected other humans walking among us. The rituals performed by the actors and priests with their dances, movement, and words serve to unite us with the powerful symbols of our archetypes and to aid in our acceptance of the helpful and our rejection of the hurtful. The rituals repeat symbolically the old stories, sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. Often the metaphor is lost to the participant, but there is still comfort in its very being.

In religion, I postulate, the more frequently we participate in these performances, the more accustomed we are to them, the more comfort we tend to receive from them. Religion exists to make us feel good about ourselves (if we obey the rules) as well as to create an orderly view of the universe and perhaps the afterlife.

Theatre’s function is to educate and entertain, not to make us feel good about ourselves nor secure in the universe. And when it is good it challenges the rules and forces us to see things differently. As a theatre practitioner, I am aware that there are only, arguably, forty-six plots, or twelve or four depending on your reference. Be that as it may, there are a finite number of stories. If one also understands that there are only seven or eight essential relationships, one can easily see that, given some arithmetic beyond my capabilities, there are no new stories. Both theatre and religion repeat the old stories; that is a major part of their ritual function, but only the theatre intends to irritate us with new questions about the old stories. Even when it has no political or sociological ax to grind, its function, besides ritual, is that of investigation into what makes us human and how to interpret the world around us.

Formal theatre (and I include film as well) in the United States has, for the most part, moved beyond it’s ancient traditions and been relegated by its general public to entertainment with the occasional serious piece thrown in for balance. Also, and with few exceptions, the American theatre has never been very political and rarely symbolic. The need for communal access to more universal ideas dealing with Rudolph Otto’s ‘mysterium tremendum’ seems to have been lost or rejected in the original colonies as a function of art in general. This was probably owing, in part, to the religious suspicion of the power of the churches’ secular and obstreperous brother to create doubt in the mind of its audience. The pilgrims and religious zealot who made up a powerful percentage of our orignal settlers wanted the audience for themselves, and wished to eradicate the sensuality implicit in the art of performance. The European theatre they had left was at its apogee when they departed. The beauty of the language, the frankness of the stories, and the complexity of the ideas and arguments addressed at that time were truly astonishing. This theatre, and its later writings, was available to a large number of people of any rank and the Protestant churches must have been truly envious.

Our Western theatre tradition began, at least according to some theorists, with the golden age of the Athenian theatre. The Greeks saw theatre attendance as a necessary part of citizenship because it served several functions simultaneously. We believe that the rituals of this theatre themselves were based on the sacrifice of a goat in early Greek religious practices. We know the first actors were also priests. As this began to change, as the Athenians became a democracy, the theatre was given a larger function. It united the citizenry on a psychic level, it re-enforced Greek political values of argument and counter-argument, and third it educated the potentially under-educated crowds both politically and morally. As Greece developed, so also did its theatre both for good and for ill. The writing became increasingly more humanly complex as the qualifications for citizenship became narrower. At the end, only the elite were left to attend.

Also, for the Greeks, the theatre was not a weekly or even monthly event; it was connected to a religious or civic festival and took place outdoors as a part of other competitive events. The festivals of Dionysius included winners and losers amongst the playwrights and eventually among the actors. The writers were also statesmen, soldiers, citizens and businessmen, and therefore an integrated portion of the elite community. However, there was little conflict between the temple and the theatre at the time. Such an idea would have been considered absurd. Of course Plato did come along and begin the proposed destruction of to theatre and mimesis which was almost completed by the Christians. But before him, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes mounted their astonishing works for the eternally grateful world.

At the festival of Dionysius, the largest of the Greek religious events, playwrights had to offer three tragedies and a comedy. This combination acknowledged that tragic feelings needed to be cauterized with the hot blade of comedy. And the comedies of the Greeks were generally satires based on present day events while the tragedies were most often historical and therefore metaphorical. Finally, though, the problem that beset the Greeks was the same problem that besets the modern theatre in America. It is an elitist event witnessed by elite audiences.

Most of my fellow theatre practitioners would attribute this problem to a lack of exposure to audiences whom they assume would fall in love with the experience as they themselves did. So we truck children by the busload to productions of Hamlet, or Antigone, or whatever else is edifying, and can’t understand when they don’t return. We attribute a lack of finances to our inability to advertise sufficiently, disregarding the amazing popularity of such black shows as Men, Money and Golf Diggers advertised only by small African-American centered publications and handbills. If we look around us, we will see that sunny, romantic, upbeat Broadway musicals are recycled endlessly throughout the land at high schools and community theatres and that Wicked is not having trouble getting an audience. The black plays on the famous ‘chitlin circuit’ tend to be very well attended despite their expense. And they draw an audience of people who rarely attend the kinds of ‘serious theatre’ we theatre folk flock to see. These shows are not ‘serious’ theatre, and therefore beneath our contempt, while they find audiences and money right beneath our much too sensitive noses. We have fallen victim to our own pessimism and tend to forget that pessimism and darkness are the part of life that most people want respite from. These shows do, however feature, clear and linear story lines with archetypal figures in the plot configurations. Their only fault from our theatrically pure perspective is a sentimental desire for a laugh and the possibility of a happy ending, just like the comedies at the end of the tragedies several thousands years ago. Or just like our elevation of Ricci Anselmi to demi-god status.

The difference in subject matter between the big shows attended by people who would never consider going to one of our earnest store fronts or our towering institutions is that they want to laugh as well as cry, and most of us theatre folks want them to think deeply about our offerings and possibly become politically or socially active and possibly cry as well.

As far as serious theatre, theatre that deeply examines issues using theatrical expression, we are pretty useless to change the world. We know this. We mope about it, we are self-righteous about it, we shake our fists at TV for taking our rightful audience, but finally we know the problem. We may be just too snooty, too taken with our importance.

We have pooh-poohed the very means by which we might be effective—vaudeville and musical theatre, clowning and dancing. We have forgotten how to entertain. Right now, many things are happening to change that attitude the Blue Man Group, Second City, the bread and puppet theatre, the Cirque du Soleil, the renewed interest in Clowning all are pointing the way through their use of humor, spectacle, and astonishing physical athleticism. The current theatre sees itself as needing to engage physically more that with language—there is a danger in this insofar as it moves from a theatre of narrative to one of sensation only. However, if the theatre is to be an effective vehicle for change, it must be far more entertaining, more physically arresting and far less self-conscious without losing it ability to tell an old story. It must re-unite its audiences with itself in a far more recognizable way.

A while ago, I went to see a film called “Charley Wilson’s War.” I went because I was interested in the subject matter, the war in Afghanistan, but also because Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman were in it. It is the only film on the topic of the war I have ventured out to see since “The Departed” which I dutifully saw. The film was enormously entertaining, full of wit and featuring some great archetypes, the reformed reprobate, the wise but gruff guru, the beautiful temptress, the uptight bureaucrat, the dumb crook, and lots of goddesses. I recognized all of these types and took great delight in seeing them played by some wonderful actors who shook the truth out of these old stand-bys. As we left the theatre, my friend reported that Charley Wilson was one of the few movies concerning the Middle East that was making money for the studios. My guess is the reason for this is the easy recognizability of the demi-gods and the comedy of the whole thing.

As far as I can see, most of the citizens of the US regardless of political leanings have been in mourning for the death of our culture, our dreams, our soldiers, and our government. We need to go to the metaphoric courtyard, to mourn, to eulogize, and then to actively laugh as we all participate to heal the rift in our hearts and souls.

So where does that leave us theatre people in the fight against the most urgent and challenging of all the wars, the fight for the environment? It seems obvious, that in spite of our fears, we must go outside, we must joke, we must make merry, we must find the archetypes that soothe, we must press the flesh. We must cut the giants of terror down to size. We must embrace a new Commedia, a new space and a new form of spectacle. We must create a series of wakes for our fallen planet. Let us have burials and wakes for the trees we know we will lose to infestation, let us remember the parks that used to exist and plant afresh. Let us join together with the environmentalists, the oceanographers, the weather scientists, and make something of our shared problems. Let us create intrusions of a comic and musical variety into the workaday world. Bring a cow to the town square and sing to it; decorate the land to be destroyed, rip out invasive species and howl as we do so and then plant again, stage events in alleys where the garbage lurks. Celebrate the hunters who cull the herds of starving deer, rather than cursing them. Lets us close off streets on Arbor Day and name the trees. There are many, many things we can do that get us back into the courtyard at in The Theatre School at Depaul University to mourn, and then to celebrate, and then to get back to work strengthened as a community because of our mutual participation in the theatre of life.