Theatres Of Thought

Theatre, fundamentally, makes things appear. Philosophy, fundamentally, makes things appear. Philosophy is at work in all disciplines. The issue is less about bringing them together but rather articulating the fact that they, like science and art, have never been truly apart. Theatre has been gradually increasing its theoretical articulation over decades, fascinated by the possibility of transforming thought into spectacle. The essays collected in this volume address these issues from wide-ranging perspectives and approaches. They arise from meetings of the Theatre, Performance and Philosophy working group at the 2005 and 2006 conferences of TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association), and from papers presented under the auspices of CTPP (Centre for Theatre, Performance and Philosophy) at Aberystwyth University.

If the brain is the theatre, consciousness is the play. But who or what controls what we watch and how we watch it? In Theatre of the Mind Jay Ingram, whose past scientific investigations include the properties of honey on toast and the complexities of the barmaid's brain, tackles one of the most controversial of subjects: consciousness. Scientists have long tried to map our brains and understand how it is that we think and are self-aware, but what do we really know? Any discussion of the brain raises more questions than answers, and Ingram illuminates some of the most perplexing ones: What happens in our minds when we're driving and we suddenly realize that we don't remember the last few miles of highway? How do we remember images, sounds, and aromas from our past so vividly, and why do we often recreate them so differently in our dreams? Ingram's latest book is a mind-bending experience, a cerebral, stylish ride through the history, philosophy, and science of the brain and the search for the discovery of the self.

Using the theatre as a central metaphor, this text provides a flexible framework to explore the psychic realities of the characters within us. Case studies underscore how different kinds of patients construct particular fantasies as a response to the pain of earlier life scenarios.

Using the theatre as a central metaphor, this text provides a flexible framework to explore the psychic realities of the characters within us. Case studies underscore how different kinds of patients construct particular fantasies as a response to the pain of earlier life scenarios.

Theatres of Immanence: Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance is the first monograph to provide an in-depth study of the implications of Deleuze's philosophy for theatre and performance. Drawing from Goat Island, Butoh, Artaud and Kaprow, as well from Deleuze, Bergson and Laruelle, the book conceives performance as a way of thinking immanence.

Analyzes the nature of drama and performance, linking contemporary thinking in theatrical and literary theory, politics and the sciences. Blau's essays illuminate crucial issues in today's theatre: the place of language and the dramatization of thought.

This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might “the theatre of death” and “the uncanny in mimesis” allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead? Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists – from Craig to Castellucci – have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an iconology of the actor allow us to imagine the afterlife of an apparently ephemeral art practice? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny. Walter Benjamin once observed that: “The point at issue in the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living...” If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, how might avant-garde theatre be thought of in terms of this same relation “today”?

Topics like hypnosis, absorbed states of mind, adaptation to trauma, and the human propensity to project expectations on uncertainty, all fit into the expanded theater metaphor.