Reviewed by:

• Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting by Amy Cook
• Gibson Alessandro Cima (bio)

With the announcement that Halley Bailey, a black R&B singer, would portray Ariel in an upcoming live-action remake of Disney's The Little Mermaid came the now sadly familiar social media backlash. The hashtag #NotMyAriel began trending on Twitter. News outlets generated handwringing think pieces about the state of the national conversation around race and racism. Freeform, a cable network owned by Disney, issued a statement: "Ariel … is a mermaid." "Spoiler alert," wrote Freeform, "the character of Ariel is a work of fiction." Similar social media firestorms, news frenzies, and studio responses followed revelations that a 2016 Ghostbusters remake and a 2018 Ocean's Eleven spinoff would feature all-female leads, that new Star Wars sequels would include people of color in leading roles, and that in 2014 Sony Entertainment briefly considered casting black actor Idris Alba as James Bond. To unpack how factors such as age, race, gender, physical attributes, historical and personal information, and reputation make an actor feel "right" or "wrong" for a role, theatre history and performance studies scholars can now turn to Amy Cook's Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting. The book uses cognitive science to understand how "we build the characters of others from a sea of stimuli." Cook argues that "the process of watching actors take on roles improves our ability to 'cast' those roles in our daily lives" (1). While the above examples might appear trivial, the stakes of casting are incredibly high. Consider the chilling grand jury testimony of Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson who described Michael Brown, the black teenager he fatally shot in 2014, as "Hulk Hogan" and "a demon." Cook's intervention into the discourse of casting suggests that "we can investigate, think through, and alter our categories" (28). This central insight makes Building Character prescient, vital, and even hopeful.

Building Character is at its most fascinating and provocative when it causes theatre history and performance studies scholars and practitioners to reconsider their models of how the brain thinks. Through five compelling chapters, Cook finds that "cognition is not some disembodied process that happens in the brain: cognition is embodied" (29). She continues, "We do not just think differently because of the bodies we have, we think with and through the bodies we have" (29). As disciplinary ambassador, rather than tourist, Cook brings cognitive scientists into conversation with humanities scholars and vice versa with startling results. In "Building Titus: Compressing the Complex into the Essential," she explores the idea of compression, a means through which our brains reduce complexity to "decrease cognitive load, increase associations, and facilitate memory" (38). Using Hollywood movie trailers as her case studies, Cook ably [End Page 116] demonstrates how celebrity bodies, as well as our past associations with actors and knowledge of their personal histories, aid our brains' character-building and narrative-constructing processes. For example, Anthony Hopkins brandishing a knife and wearing a chef's outfit in the trailer for Julie Taymor's Titus recalls his iconic turn as the cannibal Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Kenneth Branagh's celebrity persona, holds Cook, performs differently from Ethan Hawke's, telling our brains how to perceive their respective portrayals of Hamlet.

Cook further develops this argument in chapter 2, "Building Characters: Seeing Bodies," which focuses on the actor's body as a compression site. Following Rick Kemp's Embodied Acting, she posits two distinct actor categories: "transformational" for those, like Daniel Day-Lewis, who tend to disappear into their roles, and "persona" for those, like Tom Cruise, who essentially play different versions of themselves (80). But Cook notes that Kemp's categories neglect the reality that "some bodies do not disappear into a role" (83). She rightly points out that many of the narratives surrounding so-called "non-traditional" or "color-blind" casting assume the neutrality and invisibility of whiteness. "White skin in America is a privilege," writes Cook, "to insist that acting can perform away that...

审核人：

• 塑造性格：艾米·库克的铸造艺术与科学
• 吉布森·亚历山德罗·西马（生物）

随着宣布黑人 R&B 歌手哈雷·贝利（Halley Bailey）将在即将上映的迪士尼小美人鱼真人版翻拍中扮演爱丽儿的消息，引起了现在令人遗憾的熟悉社交媒体的强烈反对。#NotMyAriel 标签开始在 Twitter 上流行起来。新闻媒体对围绕种族和种族主义的全国对话状态产生了令人担忧的想法。迪士尼旗下的有线网络 Freeform 发表声明：“爱丽儿……是一条美人鱼。” “剧透警报，”Freeform 写道，“Ariel 的角色是虚构的。” 类似的社交媒体风暴、新闻狂潮和工作室的反应是继2016 年《捉鬼敢死队》翻拍版和 2018 年《海洋十一人》的衍生剧将全部由女性主演，续集将包括有色人种担任主角，2014 年索尼娱乐曾短暂考虑让黑人演员伊德里斯·阿尔巴饰演詹姆斯·邦德。为了解开年龄、种族、性别、身体特征、历史和个人信息以及声誉等因素如何让演员对某个角色感到“对”或“错”，戏剧历史和表演研究学者现在可以求助于艾米库克大厦性格：铸造的艺术与科学. 这本书使用认知科学来理解“我们如何从刺激的海洋中构建他人的性格”。库克认为“观看演员扮演角色的过程提高了我们在日常生活中‘扮演’这些角色的能力”（1）。虽然上面的例子可能看起来微不足道，但铸造的风险非常高。想想密苏里州弗格森市警官达伦威尔逊令人不寒而栗的大陪审团证词，他将他在 2014 年枪杀的黑人少年迈克尔布朗描述为“绿巨人霍根”和“恶魔”。库克对选角话语的干预表明“我们可以调查、思考和改变我们的类别”（28）。这种核心洞察力使塑造品格具有先见之明、至关重要，甚至充满希望。

建筑特色当戏剧史和表演研究学者和从业者重新考虑他们的大脑思考模型时，它是最引人入胜和最具挑衅性的。通过五个引人入胜的章节，库克发现“认知不是发生在大脑中的一些非实体化的过程：认知是实体化的”（29）。她继续说道，“我们不仅仅因为我们拥有的身体而思考不同，我们通过我们拥有的身体来思考”（29）。作为学科大使，而不是游客，库克让认知科学家与人文学者进行对话，反之亦然，并取得了惊人的成果。在“Building Titus: Compressing the Complex into the Essential”中，她探索了压缩的概念，这是一种我们的大脑降低复杂性以“减少认知负荷，[第 116 页结束]展示了名人的身体，以及我们过去与演员的联系和他们个人历史的知识，如何帮助我们的大脑进行角色塑造和叙事构建过程。例如，安东尼·霍普金斯在朱莉·泰莫 (Julie Taymor) 的《提图斯》(Titus)的预告片中挥舞着刀并穿着厨师服，回忆起他在《沉默的羔羊》中作为食人者汉尼拔·莱克特 (Hannibal Lecter) 的标志性转变。肯尼思布拉纳的名人形象，抱着库克，表现与伊桑霍克不同，告诉我们的大脑如何看待他们各自对哈姆雷特的描绘。

库克在第 2 章“构建角色：看身体”中进一步发展了这一论点，该章将演员的身体作为压缩部位。继里克·坎普的具体化表演，她断定两个不同的演员类：“转型”为那些像丹尼尔·戴·刘易斯，谁往往消失在自己的角色，而“人物”为那些像汤姆·克鲁斯，谁本质上扮演不同的版本自己 (80)。但库克指出，肯普的分类忽略了“一些身体不会消失在角色中”的现实（83）。她正确地指出，许多围绕所谓的“非传统”或“色盲”铸造的叙述都假定了白人的中立性和不可见性。“在美国，白皮肤是一种特权，”