Comparative Drama

Theatrical Practice as a Fount of Knowledge about Cognitive Processes

How—and based on which cognitive processes—do we understand others, interpret their overt intentions, attribute hidden intentions to them, and predict their future behavior with impressive success? This is the key question in a highly active research domain of modern social psychology known as mindreading.¹ Indeed, the argument that the development of social skills in a changing environment that requires flexible adaptation is the reason for human's developed brain is controversial.² But there is no doubt that social functioning is essential to the very existence of what Hannah Arendt called "the human condition."³ Humans, of course, are not the only species exhibiting complex social skills. Social animals exhibit advanced abilities of collaboration and group decision-making. Even unsociable animals show a remarkable aptitude for learning purely by observing and imitating others.⁴ Nonetheless, the ability to view one's self and the self of others as discrete mental states requires a recognition that every person has an inner world that is distinct from visible reality and shapes their actual behavior. This ability, in its distinct and elaborated form, is apparently unique to humanity. For this [End Page 175] reason, every simple social interaction almost from the moment of birth becomes a sophisticated act of creative detection, one that arouses wonder: "how is the young brain able to attend to mental states when they can be neither seen, heard nor felt?"⁵ The same questions lie at the heart of theoretical and practical discourse on theatre acting. This resemblance between psychological and theatrical discourses is almost self-evident, given that in the theatre arts the subject matter is the human being, and that theatre—as Arendt points out—"is the only art whose sole subject is man in his relationship to others."⁶

Notwithstanding the above, the ecological value of the theatre "laboratory" for psychological and cognitive study has not been recognized to the same degree as cognitive science in the theatrical discourse.⁷ But in recent years, the research potential of actors' work has begun to draw renewed interest among cognitive scientists.⁸ Early signs of this curiosity could be found already in the late nineteenth century, with Alfred Binet's pioneering study of theatre actors. Binet asked nine renowned acting practitioners of his time to introspect about their subjective experiences during rehearsals and stage performances. This knowledge, he believed, could give him a deeper understanding of internal processes relevant to the entire population. This is mainly because the actor, while "giv[ing] himself wholly up to his trouble," can be considered as an expert who "has to be observant of his playing, to regulate its effects, his gestures, and his exclamations."⁹ Over the past century, several study lines have been developed in order to examine acting and actors from various perspectives, including memory,¹⁰ empathy,¹¹ and suggestibility.¹² But, further support is still needed to confidently argue that theatre arts can indeed be used by cognitive sciences as a fount of knowledge about inner processes in general and about social behavior in particular.¹³

In this essay, we suggest reinforcing this argument from a historical perspective. Inspection of a corpus of acting theories reveals a strong link, which can be traced back to the eighteenth century, between the latter and contemporary cognitive concepts. It exists despite the differences in norms and conventions that were prevalent in a given historical, social and cultural context. A new reading of a selection of examples from the vast existing corpus of the French, British, German and Italian acting discourse points at some basic insights, which were conceptualized in [End Page 176] social cognitive discourse 300 years later. Specifically, mental integration, mental simulation, and mental manipulation, which are discussed below. In this sense, we follow Daniel Larlham who argues that a careful reading of the eighteenth-century acting corpus reveals the existence of ideas about the perception of emotions that are similar to contemporary concepts, such as kinesthetic empathy and embodied intersubjectivity.¹⁴ Yet...