Applying Performance

Applying Performance Also by Nicola Shaughnessy GERTRUDE STEIN MARGARET WOFFINGTON (ed. with R. Shaughnessy) Applying Performance Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice Nicola Shaughnessy © Nicola Shaughnessy 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-24133-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-31705-9 ISBN 978-1-137-03364-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137033642 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 For Gabriel and in memory of Virginia Sharp (1963–2008) This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations x Acknowledgements xii Preface: Defining the Terms xiv Part I Histories and Contexts 1 Setting the Scene: Critical and Theoretical Contexts Remembering Brith Gof Affective practice The naming of applied performance 2 Pasts, Pioneers, Politics Avant-garde and radical theatres Bread and Puppet Theatre Welfare State International The problems and politics of intervention Reflections on the present Principles of applying performance 2.1 APPLYING PERFORMANCE: PRINCIPLES AND A COGNITIVE 3 4 6 7 15 15 21 23 25 28 31 32 PARADIGM OF PRACTICE Part II Practices 3 Performing Lives 3.1 AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND APPLIED PERFORMANCE 3.2 ACTS OF RECALL: MEMORY, IDENTITY AND POST-TRAUMATIC 47 47 58 PERFORMANCE Touching trauma: Vayu Naidu’s rasaesthetics and performance storytelling 3.3 REMEMBERED LIVES AND THE CONTINUOUS PRESENT: APPLIED PERFORMANCE AND DEMENTIA Remembering to forget: a trip down memory lane Good medicine: multisensory performance and affective science in Spare Tyre’s Once Upon a Time 3.4 BETWEEN LIVES: INTERGENERATIONAL PERFORMANCE Memories, archives and personal performance: The Women’s Library and Magic Me vii 61 68 69 70 76 78 viii 4 5 Contents 3.5 MAKING IT REAL THROUGH APPLYING PERFORMANCE Home truths: London Bubble’s My Home The true real: Mark Storer’s Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories 87 89 Placing Performance 4.1 PLACING APPLIED PERFORMANCE Space and place in applied performance Site and place Problematizing place Changing places: public art and performance in Margate Contesting place: shifting theoretical positions 4.2 STAN’S CAFE: PLAGUE NATION/OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN ALL THE WORLD 4.3 REMAKING MUSEUM SPACE: RECKLESS SLEEPERS’ CREATING THE PAST Creating the Past as post-dramatic museum theatre Perspectives on evaluation 4.4 BEYOND SITE: ACCIDENTAL COLLECTIVE’S PEBBLES TO THE PIER 94 94 98 102 104 Digital Transportations Digital divides, digital natives and C&T Embodying sonic technologies: Melanie Wilson’s sound art 91 108 112 116 129 135 141 143 159 159 176 Part III Participation 6 Participatory (Syn)Aesthetics 6.1 UNHAPPY RELATIONS: CRITIQUES OF COLLABORATION 6.2 THEME PARK HELLS: INCARCERATIONS This is Camp X Ray State of Incarceration 6.3 PARTICIPANT CENTRED PEDAGOGY AND THE AFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: LIFT 2011 Performing the Living Archive: And the Winner is… London Through the round window 6.4 A TASTE OF HEAVEN: (SYN)AESTHETICS AND PARTICIPATORY VISCERAL PERFORMANCE Martha Bowers: The Dream Life of Bricks 185 187 202 202 206 209 211 220 225 225 Contents 6.5 ‘SOMETHING MOVES’: (SYN)AESTHETICS, ix RASAESTHETICS AND THE PERFORMANCE OF AUTISM ‘Making up your mind’: engaging with autism Through the looking glass: the autistic consciousness and post-dramatic theatre: Jacqui Russell and Red Kite (Chicago Children’s Theatre) 233 234 237 Conclusion: Affective Practice 250 Notes 256 Bibliography 263 Index 279 List of Illustrations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Participate, 2008. Contemporary Jewish Museum, New York. Photograph by kind permission of Bruce Damonte 51 Helen Preddy and Heba Soliman in Spare Tyre’s Once Upon a Time at Nightingale House, 2010. Photograph by kind permission of Arti Prashar, Artistic Director, Spare Tyre and Patrick Baldwin, photographer 73 London Bubble, Blackbirds. Photograph by kind permission of Steve Hickey and London Bubble 78 Moving Lives Group, Magic Me. Still from the video installation the group displayed at The Women’s Library in May 2011. Photograph by kind permission of Magic Me. Image created by Moving Lives Group 83 Sarah Hobson in London Bubble’s My Home. Photograph by kind permission of Steve Hickey and London Bubble 89 Uryi, Towards a Promised Land, Margate, 2010. Photograph by kind permission of Wendy Ewald 108 Of All the People In All The World at the Nagy Britmania Supernow Festival, Budapest. Photograph by kind permission of Graeme Rose and Stan’s Cafe 116 Reckless Sleepers’ Creating the Past, Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, March–September 2002. Photograph by kind permission of Reckless Sleepers 129 Pebbles to the Pier, Accidental Collective, 2007. Photograph by kind permission of Peter Fry (photography) and Accidental Collective 152 C&T using mobile phones, Tendaba, The Gambia. Photograph by kind permission of Paul Sutton and Max Allsup, C&T 175 LIFT archive. Photograph by kind permission of Tim Mitchell 215 And the Winner is… London. St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Punishment Book from School Archive. Photograph by kind permission of Erica Campayne and LIFT 218 x List of Illustrations 13 xi Urban Dream Capsule, 1999. Photograph by Michael J. O’Brien 221 14 Martha Bowers Dream Life of Bricks. Photograph by kind permission of Kevin Kennefick 226 15 Red Kite Theatre Company in Red Kite Blue Moon. Photograph by kind permission of Jacqui Russell, Margaret Strickland and Chicago Children’s Theatre 246 Red Kite Theatre Company in Red Kite Round Up. Photograph by kind permission of Jacqui Russell and Chicago Children’s Theatre 247 16 Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright materials: Canterbury Museum for permission to use Jack Waller’s story. The photographers and artists who kindly gave me permission to reproduce their images: Reckless Sleepers, Bruce Damonte, Patrick Baldwin, Steve Hickey, Magic Me and the Moving Lives Group, Wendy Ewald, Graeme Rose, Peter Fry, Paul Sutton and Max Allsup, Tim Mitchell, and Kevin Kennefick. An earlier version of ‘Digital Transportations’ has been published in: ‘Truths and Lies: Exploring the Ethics of Performance Applications’, Research in Drama Education 10.2 (2005): 201–12. I am grateful to the Taylor & Francis Group for their permission to use this work. I also wish to acknowledge the London International Festival of Theatre Living Archive and to thank staff at Goldsmiths Special Collections for their help and support with my research and permissions to use material. I am extremely grateful to Paula Kennedy, Commissioning Editor of Literature and Performance at Palgrave Macmillan for publishing the book and for steadfast support during the period of writing. Thanks are also due to Benjamin Doyle, Assistant Editor at Palgrave for his rigour and efficiency in keeping the book on track. I am deeply indebted to the book’s copy editor, Penny Simmons, for her care, engagement, efficiency and support during the production period and to the staff at Palgrave for help and advice on the manuscript. It has been a pleasure to work with the whole publication team. I wish to extend my gratitude to the University of Kent for two periods of study leave at the beginning and end of the research process. Material from the book has been presented to the Applied and Social Theatre Group at the UK’s annual conferences of the Theatre and Performance Research Association, as well as the American Society for Theatre Research working group: Cognitive Science in Theatre, Dance and Performance. I would like to thank colleagues in both working groups, as these discussions have informed the development of the research. In particular, I wish to thank Amy Cook, John Lutterbie and Bruce McConachie for encouraging me to bring a cognitive perspective to my work in applied theatre and performance. To the practitioners who have contributed so generously and taught me so much, a huge thank you, especially to Margaret Ames, Martha Bowers, xii Acknowledgements xiii Helena Bryant, Sue Mayo and Magic Me, Vayu Naidu, Pablo Pakula and Daisy Orton at Accidental Collective, Paul Sutton and C&T, Jonathan Petherbridge and the London Bubble, Arti Prashar and Spare Tyre, Melanie Wilson, James Yarker and Kerrie Reading at Stan’s cafe, Jacqui Russell and Chicago Children’s Theatre, and Mole Wetherell. I am grateful for conversations with Hans Thies Lehmann and Richard Schechner during their tenure as Leverhulme Research Professors at the University of Kent. My discussion of post-dramatic theatre and rasaesthetics benefited from this dialogue. I am indebted to colleagues and students in the School of Arts (past and present) at the University of Kent, who have been extremely supportive. Particular thanks are due to Jill Davies for critical acumen, as well as reminders of the need for balance and short emails in the early stages of writing; Paul Allain for being an excellent research mentor and for resolving headaches, and to members of the research centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance, especially Fran Barbe and Helen Brooks (a excellent digital native). Thanks also to Sian Stevenson and Jayne Thompson for inspirational practice and for Sian’s room with a view. Special thanks are due to those who have worked closely with me during the book’s production: Jonathan Friday for all his support and conviction, and Melissa Trimingham who always believed in this project and for ongoing dialogue about embodiment, cognition and autism. I am particularly indebted to Robert Shaughnessy for childcare, cooking and conversations all of which have kept this project live. Finally, a thank you to my children for keeping this in perspective and for helping when it was needed; thanks to Caitlin for being in tune, Nat for brothering and Erina for being herself. Special thanks are due to Gabriel for helping me to perceive differently and for enabling me to fully understand the importance and value of applying performance. Preface: Defining the Terms At the beginning of writing, there is a loss. What cannot be said. (de Certeau, 1984: 195) As its title suggests, this book explores applications of performance practices in educational, social and community contexts. The writing is situated in the spaces between making and performance, exploring the processes of creating work variously defined as collaborative, participatory and socially engaged. The difficulties of writing about the ephemeral medium of performance continue to be a source of critical discussion (Phelan, 1993; Schneider, 2011). ‘Loss’, in the context of writing about performance, is associated with the death of the ‘live’ event. De Certeau’s reference to ‘what cannot be said’ invokes the difficulties of writing about a medium as elusive as performance and of negotiating the absence and presence of events which have happened but which remain as memory and cannot be recovered. At the end of writing there is also loss (not least in the material edited out and the practices not featured, as well as deceased performance events) as a process comes to its end, but this closure is also a beginning as a book, like performance, enters production and reaches its audience. At the beginnings and ends of writing about performance, moreover, there is something to be gained through remembering and recreating. The decomposing corpse of performance is, after all, transforming into something else, a different kind of performance matter. And we write about performance because it matters. Applying is derived from the Latin applicare, its etymological sense being ‘to bring things in contact with one another’ to ‘join’ to ‘connect’ and, figuratively to ‘devote (oneself) to’, ‘give attention’.1 Implicit in this terminology is the concept of ‘care’: practitioners of applied theatre and performance care about and/or care for the communities they are working with; the work is often politically or pedagogically motivated; it has conscience, integrity and commitment. The process of applying performance is a bringing together of elements to create change, to make something new. Thus, in writing about these processes, there is gain (as well as loss). Writing about performance is itself a/gain as the work is recovered in a different form and shared with an audience of readers who may not have experienced the original. As Helen Nicholson has written: Whilst the performative moment may be lost or (rather more accurately) embodied only in the collective memories of the participants, the written word remains open for re-interpretation and invites critical questioning. xiv Preface xv Analysis of, and reflection on, performative events keeps them alive by breaking down the polarity between process and product, between past and present, theory and practice. Furthermore, a written text enables a wider audience to participate in the event by inviting them to take an imaginative journey into the performance space. In this conceptualization, writing for publication is an act of generosity. (2006: 1) Writing about the terminology of ‘applied’ drama/theatre in the same editorial, Nicholson draws attention to a change of wording in Research in Drama Education’s (RIDE) published aims as being for those interested in ‘applying performance practices to cultural engagement, educational innovation and social change’ (Nicholson, 2006: 2; my emphasis). The term ‘performance’ is used by Nicholson to acknowledge ‘the distinctive place of community, educational and applied theatre within contemporary theatre making’. The broad spectrum of practices featured within this study draw upon the forms, vocabularies, technologies and methodologies broadly associated with contemporary theatre and performance: ‘devising’, ‘performance art’, ‘durational’, ‘site/place responsive’, ‘intermedial’ are all terms associated with the work discussed here. Like Mike Pearson, ‘I prefer “performance”: to embrace the fullest range of practices originating in theatre and visual art and to demonstrate affiliations with the academic field of performance studies’ (Pearson, 2010: 1). Much of the work featured can also be defined in the context of ‘live art’, a term used by a number of practitioners to refer to their own work and to the practices I discuss: The term Live Art is not a description of a singular form or discipline, but a cultural strategy to include processes and practices that might otherwise be excluded from more established curatorial, cultural and critical discourses. A strategy to acknowledge ways of working that do not sit easily within received structures and strictures and to privilege artists who choose to operate across, in between and at the edges of more conventional artistic forms to make art that invests in ideas of process, presence and experience as much as the production of objects or things; art that is immediate and real; and art that wants to test the limits of the possible and the permissible. (Keidan, 2004: 9) This positioning of working across and between disciplines and forms, is particularly pertinent to artists engaged in applying performance; hybrid practices which, like performance itself, evade definition, refusing to be constrained by categorical frameworks. Thus to conceive of this work as a strategy is a useful means of conceptualizing the practices discussed. The commitment of live artists to finding ‘new languages for the representation of ideas, new xvi Preface ways of activating audiences and new strategies for intervening in public life’ (ibid.: 9) is shared by many applied theatre practitioners who similarly seek to find new ways of engaging audiences as participants, developing, where appropriate, interventionist strategies to challenge or to transform existing systems of representation, hierarchies and ideologies. Whilst contemporary forms of performance are often considered to be modes of ‘art theatre’ and non-utilitarian (art for art’s sake), the work featured in this book demonstrates that some live art has a social intention and function and is increasingly seeking to challenge the dualisms of the aesthetic and non-aesthetic (or what might be considered as pure versus applied theatre, as discussed in Part I). The twenty-first-century tendency to involve children in both the making and performance of contemporary theatre for adults, for example, can be seen as an indication of live artists moving beyond elitist perceptions of theatre for and by grown-ups as they explore the relations between children and adults, their influences upon each other, identity formation and the liminal, transitory space of adolescence. Examples include the CAMPO trilogy of theatre works with children, made for an adult audience (Josse De Pauw’s üBUNG, Tim Etchells’s That Night Follows Day and Gob Squad’s Before Your Very Eyes), Fevered Sleep’s On Ageing as well as Mark Storer’s Fat Girl Gets a Haircut and Other Stories (discussed in Part II in the context of autobiographical performance). This work occupies the space between applied theatre and live art, between modes of ‘doing’ and ‘not doing’, learning and playing, the space between autonomous art and engaged art which Rancière conceptualizes in The Politics of Aesthetics as the ‘becoming life of art’ (2006).2 Challenging the relations between modernism and postmodernism, autonomous art and the avant-garde, Rancière reconfigures and recontextualizes aesthetics as a ‘regime of identification of art’ (differentiated from what he defines as ‘ethical’ and ‘representational’ regimes) in which the aesthetics of art as art (the ‘resistant’ form) and art as life coexist in a simultaneous and complementary relationship. Rancière’s theories, in conjunction with Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’ (2002), offer a conceptual middle way for considering the social value and efficacy of contemporary art practices.3 The role and experience of both the spectator and the community in which the art is produced is central to the re-evaluation of efficacy in these relational and participatory practices and encounters. Efficacy, moreover, is also defined in terms of the participant’s experience as affect theory brings together aesthetic and socially engaged perspectives. Throughout this study, then, different genealogies are engaged in dialogue as contemporary relational art is linked to post-dramatic theatre. Thus post-dramatic theatre, live art and applied performance converse, conjoined by shared interests in audience engagement, innovation, affect and a commitment to the social value of the arts. My analysis of the processes involved in ‘encounters’ between performers, participants and spectators draws on recent studies of cognition and performance to theorize these relationships. In his preface to Performance Preface xvii and Cognition, Bruce McConachie invites scholars to ‘incorporate many of the insights of cognitive science into their work and to begin considering all of their research projects from the perspective of cognitive studies’ (McConachie and Hart, 2006: x). This is the first full-length study to consider applied theatre from the perspective of cognitive studies and in so doing engages in dialogue with a range of other disciplines – philosophy, anthropology and education. A cognitive approach is ‘applied’ to explore how learning is embodied, to discuss concepts of ‘transformation’ through performance, to analyse the experience of the participant/spectator and the processes involved in the production of meaning. As I am not a trained scientist, much of the discussion involves what Tim Etchells refers to in his practice as creative borrowing (Etchells, 1999). By appropriating perspectives and insights from cognitive science, postmodern performance theory and applied theatre practice, this study brings into dialogue disciplines that have previously engaged in debate. Rhonda Blair confronted similar challenges in bringing together science, acting and postmodern theory. As she has explained, ‘some of the difficulties of working in an integrated way with acting, performance theory and science grow out of common and mistaken artificial binaries such as science vs. art, thinking vs. feeling and reason vs. emotion. However, my task has been made easier by the plasticity and openness of Acting as a discipline to embrace interdisciplinarity’ (Blair, 2008: 5). In applied theatre and performance, interdisciplinarity is also a feature of the field, with work informed by, for example, educational theory, cultural and human geography, psychology, gender theory and, more recently, affect theory. Thus the field is open to a range of theoretical perspectives; a cognitive approach offers a means of conceptualizing perception, memory, embodiment and transformation, exploring how practitioners and participants ‘engage with and become engaged by [applied] performance’ (McConachie, 2008: 8). Mind the gap For Rhonda Blair, although ‘there is something true in many “practice-centered” and “theory-centered” perspectives … there is also something missing, and this missing thing is located in a more thorough investigation of the integration of these perspectives’ (2008: xi). Her book explores actor training from this perspective and John Lutterbie has developed this further (2011). These studies of actor training complement McConachie’s work on spectatorship as explorations of cognition and performance. Cognitive neuroscience has reconceptualized our understanding of how we learn, the way we think and how we engage with our environment. Perception, memory, identity and subjectivity, agency, relations and interactions with others, emotions, empathy, embodiment, affect are prevalent themes of both applied theatre scholarship and cognitive studies and this book endeavours to bring them into dialogue with each other. Even the divisions between Eastern and Western approaches xviii Preface to performance are interrogated. The subtitle to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s study is The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. There are some surprising synergies between the teaching and practices of Eastern aesthetics and the cognitive perspectives explored here, particularly in terms of embodiment (see my discussion of Rasa in Parts I and III). Integrating these concepts involves challenging the dualisms of theory and practice, mind and body, self and other by conceiving of these concepts as dynamic, iterative and integrated. The turn to ‘affect’ in applied theatre gestures towards this (Thompson, 2009; Nicholson, 2011); performance theorists articulate similar perspectives about emotion/feeling, body and pleasure in a related turn to spectatorship, a recognition that meaning in performance is not dependent on the semiotics of the mise-en-scène, but involves the embodied engagement, understanding and experience of the audience (Shepherd, 2006). Anna Fenemore, a scholar practitioner, brings both perspectives together with clarity and insight when she writes ‘on being moved by performance’ (2003). She coins her own terminology in this article (as discussed in Chapter 3 Performing Lives), but what she is writing about can be conceptualized through the cognitive perspectives on performance articulated by McConachie (2008) and Stephen Di Benedetto (2010). A cognitive approach considers feelings as emotions ‘brought into consciousness … [so that] affective responses become an ongoing part of the feedback loop of spectating’ (McConachie and Hart, 2006: 6). Many of the practices discussed in this book are identified with postmodern paradigms, although some of the theoretical perspectives emerging from postmodernism engage in argument with cognitive neuroscience. As Blair summarizes: ‘from these postmodern perspectives, both science and acting lack sufficient cultural contextualization and therefore require rigorous interrogation’ (2008: 5). These postmodern perspectives have, however, been challenged as cynical, reductive and inappropriate as theoretical paradigms for twenty-first-century performance: Progressive ideals and practices clash with postmodern theory’s intransigent and homogenizing world view, that is to say, with its now inherent conservatism (whereas once upon a time – specifically the late 1970s and early 1980s – it was radical), postmodern theory, once nemesis and destroyer of the author, the sign and the metanarrative, has itself become an authorial patriarch of conformist cultural commentary; a burning yet myopic critical sign; an oppressive metanarrative beyond compare within the history of critical theory. (Dixon, 2007: 7) Dixon cites Stephen Wilson’s suggestion that artists can choose to locate their work within one of three theoretical paradigms: a contemporary version of modernism (privileging the autonomy of the artist and artefact), a new form Preface xix of deconstructive postmodernism, or practices exploring new technologies (Wilson, 2002: 26). I suggest that a fourth possibility is socially engaged art praxis; evidence of the turn to this paradigm can be seen in Shannon Jackson’s study, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (2011). Minding the ‘gaps’ in this study (meaning a careful negotiation of these in-between spaces) also involves being situated in between performance disciplines. Mark Storer (a practitioner discussed in the context of applied theatre and featured in Part II, Chapter 3, ‘Performing Lives’) describes himself as ‘working in the space between live art and theatre’4 and this book is similarly situated in between live art and what Richard Schechner and James Thompson refer to as ‘social theatre’ (Schechner and Thompson, 2004). As such, it extends current definitions of applied performance, embracing some of the forms emerging from participatory arts practice: ‘public’, ‘participatory’ and ‘collaborative’ modes of contemporary art. Methodologies, form, content The methodology involved an autoethnographic perspective through fieldwork (participating in workshops and performances) and interviews. Autoethnography is defined by Norman Denzin as writing which draws upon ethnography and autobiography (2003). My account brings a personal perspective to the work discussed, as the experiential engages in dialogue with the social, cultural and critical. The case studies are similarly chosen as indicative practices which function (as in phenomenology) as ‘examples [which] are the methodological language through which the deep structures of experience are explored’ (van Manen, 1979: 5). As applied theatre and performance generally takes place outside of the public space of theatres and galleries and is often ‘bespoke’, developed for particular communities in a particular context, the work is not readily accessible, is difficult to document (due to the ethics of participant-centred practices) and hence requires ‘thick’ description as a means of making the material visible. According to McConachie, ‘ the two major approaches that theatre scholars have used to understand how we process visual information from the stage – phenomenology and semiotics – cannot, by themselves, reveal our dual modes of processing … semiotics makes no foundational distinctions between looking at the physical world and watching intentional human action’ (2008: 57). In both applied theatre and many contemporary modes of performance, the production of meaning is even more complex, involving multiple (rather than dual) modes of processing through work which involves embodied, sensorial and experiential engagement, where the ‘audience’ or ‘spectator’ is positioned as ‘partaker’ to use Schechner’s terms.5 Applying performance, like live art, ‘invests in ideas of process, presence and experience as much as the production of objects or things … art that seeks to be alert and responsive to its contexts, sites and audiences’ (Live Art, 2009). xx Preface Cognitive science offers a useful framework, then, for understanding the processes of applying performance: reception, meaning making, identity formation, social interaction, group behaviour, emotional systems, processes of change, and even morality, can all be conceptualized through this developing body of theory. Whilst it is important to emphasize the hypothetical nature of cognitive thinking (it makes no claims to be ‘truth’), this body of work has challenged our assumptions about how the mind/brain works as well as calling into question some theories which have historically informed theatre and performance scholarship, particularly psychoanalysis and semiology. For McConachie, however, ‘cognitive studies offers a more empirically responsible path to knowledge in cultural history than psychoanalysis’ (McConachie and Hart, 2006: 54). Part I explores this further, establishing the theoretical and historical contexts for the study. In the avant-garde, we can identify the pioneers, politics and principles for applying performance. Cognitive perspectives provide a framework for conceptualizing the interventionist approach to performance, the changed relations between performers and spectators and the emancipation of performance as well as spectators, as performance moved beyond building-based theatre and galleries and into public space. A section on principles suggests a taxonomy for applying performance, identifying seven features which link the range of practices discussed and which emerged from the field work phase of my research. Part II focuses upon practices and has three chapters: Chapter 3, ‘Performing Lives’, explores a range of work in which auto/biographies are the source material for applying performance, drawing on traditions of performance art and documentary modes of performance. This chapter uses cognitive theory to explore the construction and performance of identities and lives. In Chapter 4 the focus moves from ‘who’ to ‘where’ in a discussion of ‘placing performance.’ McConachie (2007) and Jeff Malpas (1999) argue that place is central to how we perceive and conceptualize and this is endorsed in a range of research discussing site responsive performance. Digital technologies are also part of the environment we inhabit in the twenty-first century, contributing to the language we speak and, increasingly, becoming an extension of the object world. Multimedia theatre has developed into a particularly significant strand of contemporary performance practice, as evident in the work of, for example, Blast Theory, The Builders Association, Company in Space, Troika Ranch and Stelarc. Described by Steve Dixon as an ‘emergent avant-garde’ (2007: 7), the pervasive influence of digital technologies on performance and in everyday life is similarly evident in the processes and practices of applying performance. Chapter 5, ‘Digital Transportations’, discusses how computer technologies and digital media are being used in conjunction with live art and performance in educational and social contexts. The vocabularies of ‘digital natives’ (to use Mark Prensky’s contested terms) articulate and Preface xxi create new perspectives, new modes of communication and new kinds of interactivity. Part III explores the participant perspective, engaging with current debates in applied theatre and performance concerning aesthetics, ethics and affect. Questions to be asked here are: ‘who’ it is for? what is the ‘outcome’? and is this ‘aesthetic’ (with particular reference to Erika Fischer Lichte’s analysis) or not? Drawing on Claire Bishop’s work (2004, 2006), I question some of the practices emerging from the turn to affect, particularly the ‘disneyfication’ of some forms of so called ‘immersive’ performance and the influence of this on applied performance. Participation is, however, a defining feature of applied performance and the final part of the book explores a range of examples examining how and why this is affective practice. Throughout the book I have endeavoured to integrate form and content by producing forms of writing which affect as well as analyse. Academic writing, like all forms of writing, is auto/biographical and this is no exception. Chapter 3, on performing lives, opens with a personal perspective from a live artist on her experience of applying performance, while my discussion of working with dementia also includes an autobiographical element. Chapter 4, on place, takes the reader on a range of journeys and experiences – from the Kent coast to the United States and back again. The structure of the book is also shaped by the content, particularly the connectionist model of cognition. According to Elizabeth Wilson, a feminist neuroscientist, cognitive processing involves ‘the spread of activation across a network of interconnected, neuron-like units …. It is the connections between these units, rather than the units per se, that take on the pivotal role in the functioning of the network’ (Wilson, 1998: 6). The chapters of the book are conceived to function like neurological units and it is the connections between them which generate meaning. To some extent the tripartite structure can function autonomously as three independent parts of a whole. Whilst Part I establishes a contextual framework, Part II involves a flexible spatial arrangement and the chapters on the various practices can be read in any order; although Part III is conceived as a finale and conclusion, it is also free standing. The seven principles of applying performance (pedagogy, process, play, presence, participation, performance and pleasure) provide links across and between chapters. The book is not structured according to the settings in which the work is created, but in accordance with various modes of contemporary performance. Each part could be a book-length study and is designed to work as a touchstone to provoke further discussion, to stimulate new ideas for new applications, and to provide working examples of the integration of theory and practice within a cognitive framework. Linking the various elements together is cognitive theory, a context for creating dialogue, encounters, connection and conceptual coherence, keeping it all in play. As McConachie asserts, ‘performance matters, and cognitive studies can help to show how and why this is so’ (2008: xii).