Theatre and Consciousness: The Nature of Bio-Evolutionary Complexity in the Arts (Artists and Issues in the Theatre)

Human beings have speech, we have consciousness, but 130,000 years ago we had nothing: why? Theatre and Consciousness argues that the functioning of human consciousness in interpreting and staging a theatrical performance is among the most highly selective and adaptive operations known to science. The emergence of the human mind out of discontinuous, pulsing, neuronal brain patterns is a study in complexity theory, possibly as complicated as the organization of the universe. According to this book, the theatre as a substrate of consciousness is one element that defines modern man as a reflective species, having evolved over 190,000,000 years. The emergence of Homo Sapiens is unique and fundamentally unpredictable; our developed speech is closer to birdsong than to any other species' communication on earth, we have survived five galactic "beam-splitters" from space, and our evolutionary, discontinuous cortex has found a pattern to existence that may include up to twenty-six folded dimensions of "string-theory" space. This book asserts that the story of theatre is the story of the evolution of our second generation star. Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 12 Acknowledgments......Page 14 PART ONE: EVOLUTION OF THE ATRICAL CONSCIOUSNESS......Page 16 Beginnings......Page 18 Language and Birdsong......Page 19 Practical Limits......Page 27 Audience Transformations......Page 31 History Markers......Page 33 Pioneers of Complexity and Mind......Page 36 Theatre as an Adaptive System......Page 38 Discontinuous Choice with a Stacked Deck......Page 44 Neural Cortex in Contemporary Theatre......Page 45 Paradigm Shifts......Page 47 Talk about Interstices!......Page 50 Neural Typologies......Page 52 Discontinuous Processes in the Visual Arts......Page 53 Chaos and Complexity......Page 56 Limits of Dissipative Chaotic Structures......Page 58 The Smell Brain......Page 62 Complexity Abyss......Page 64 Hallucinations......Page 70 Artaud and Creation......Page 71 Interstices in the Chasm: The Medical Evidence......Page 74 Boundaries of the Triune Brain......Page 75 PART TWO: ANCIENT WONDERS......Page 78 A Thalamic-ridden Species......Page 80 Language and Evolution......Page 83 Cambrian Attributes of Consciousness......Page 85 Secondary Associations in Theatre......Page 89 Parameters, Typologies, and Perturbations......Page 91 Theatre and Nature......Page 94 A Theatrical Species......Page 95 Computational Strategies for Theatrical Consciousness......Page 99 Quadrune Theatrical Brain of Homo Sapiens......Page 103 Limbic Games......Page 104 Indexical Dynamics......Page 107 Evolution into Complexity......Page 112 Actions, Displacements, and Transformation: the Movement Factor......Page 114 The Unintentional Artist......Page 116 "Dances of Darkness" from Ono Kasua and Hijikata Tatsumi......Page 121 Theatrical Thresholds of Neural Darwinism......Page 123 Cenozoic Sonatas......Page 124 On the Brink of Instability......Page 126 Looms’ Limits......Page 128 PART THREE: THE THEATRICAL GENOME......Page 130 Samuel Beckett’s Neural Cosmos......Page 132 Dance Theatre Forms from the Indus Valley......Page 145 The Chinese Pear Garden......Page 148 Beckett’s Genomics......Page 154 Pandora’s Proteomics......Page 156 In the Presence of Negative Space......Page 159 Notes......Page 162 Bibliography......Page 178 B......Page 186 D......Page 187 I......Page 188 N......Page 189 S......Page 190 V......Page 191 Z......Page 192 Consciousness is a rhythm that begins deep in the old brain perhaps 200 million years ago, says American travelling instructor, writer, and director Armstrong. Following hard on the entrance of self-awareness came the display of self-awareness, which he equates with performance. Therefore, he says, the key element in theater is not language or even vision, but movement that introduces change in the brain, in rhythms that leave spectators enough time to warp their thinking through the change. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR