Performing Psychologies (Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues)

by PhilipBarnard (Author), NicolaShaughnessy (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  2018

  $150.41

  Performing Psychologies offers new perspectives on drama and psychology, demonstrating the value of interdisciplinary collaboration to enhance understanding of the mind. Encompassing a range of conditions (including autism, dementia, schizophrenia), the book challenges stereotypes of disability, madness and creativity, bringing arts and science into dialogue, with contributions from psychologists, theatre scholars and practitioners. Performance practices, as this book demonstrates, offer insights into mental processes, engaging with emotion, memory, imagination, empathy and psychic distress in ways that complement and enhance scientific approaches. In Part 1, Nicola Shaughnessy offers historical and contemporary perspectives on the dynamic interactions between theatre, psychology, conditions of mind and conditions of production. A case study of Hamlet considers how representations of Hamlet and Ophelia are inextricably related to shifting medical, cultural and political models, particularly the history of psychiatry. The cognitive turn in contemporary theatre offers a backdrop for discussion of creativity and neurodiversity, focusing on Katie Mitchell's theatre directing. The account also includes discussion of participatory and applied practices in health and community settings to consider the different ways in which performance interacting with neuroscience offers insights into psychopathologies, atypical imagination and creativity. In Part II, Philip Barnard contributes his perspective as an applied scientist to investigate the cognitive processes associated with creative thinking and to develop bridging strategies to support shared understandings in interdisciplinary work. With emphases on both attention and meaning systems, his chapter examines parallels between the applications of theory in both clinics and performance studios. This section also contains contributions from psychologists, health professionals and a drama therapist, who reflect on their experience of interdisciplinary collaboration working with and through performance based media to engage with conditions such as autism, dementia and eating disorders. Part III features examples of performance practices illuminating interior worlds and includes work with inmates on death row, the staging of autism in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Chekhov Lizard Brain and the production of The Eradication of Schizophrenia in Western Lapland, a piece informed by the open dialogue approach created and performed by UK theatre company, Ridiculusmus.