Is theatre brain food?

Good news for Book Clubs from recent scientific research allegedly showing that "Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading."

Emory University in Atlanta used 21 students ~ admittedly not a massive sample, given that the population of its home state Georgia is ten million ~ and found that "reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory. The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain."  This is the area associated with "grounded cognition", the phenomenon which shows thinking about an action can activate the neurons associated with that physical act.

“The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist,” said neuroscientist Professor Gregory Berns, lead author of the study. "We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

The students read the same text, Robert Harris's thriller Pompeii, over 19 days and were given brain scans each morning and for five days after completing the book. This was the bit Prof Berns got excited about: "Even though the participants were not actually reading the novel, they retained the heightened creativity... almost like a muscle memory." Anyone who was a bookish child will recognise this effect without the need for science. I must be one of many who can recall protagonists in the books I inhabited more vividly than many real people.  And there's a general acceptance that films and videos have a huge influence on those who watch them. If imagined scenarios on page or screen can significantly stimulate mental activity, what about plays?  

I'm curious about the way stage drama, possibly considered an 'art' like sculpture only moving & talking a bit, seems overlooked as a power to stimulate the same responses. It certainly wasn't so in the past.  Think of Queen Elizabeth I, hastily pushing playwrights in the Tower lest they stir the people to revolt, and other rulers who took similar steps.  The Greeks tragedians understood the power of drama to change minds, and used salutary myths to warn and guide.  Is there something anodyne about much of the 'theatre' promoted nowadays, with a mission to entertain rather than excite or disturb?

 The exorbitant cost of seats in large venues can maybe take part of the blame: the 'market' is seen as children who want easy and funny, and older middle-class who want familiar-name revivals.  I don't think either assumption is true. In the Pub Theatre I co-run with founder Rosie Finnegan, audience feedback often comments with huge positivity about how unexpected, and powerful, they find the plays we put on. "Thought-provoking" is a frequent comment, alongside enthusiastic accolades.

 A play is finished sooner (probably) than a novel, but live performance has the added element of shared experience ~ in situations not bounded by red plush seats, this can magnify responses to the dreaded mob mentality.  Maybe that's what Queen Elizabeth feared. Playwrights like Tim Crouch are already deliberately exploring the impact of audience on performance in their writing. Maybe what we need is less posh sets and media stars in title roles, and more  plays that reflect on ordinary life. It's not escapist glamour, but that's what Strictly Come Dancing is for, isn't it?

Breeching the wall

I haven't written much here for a while. Thoughts on things dramatic flit past like damsel flies across a murky pond (that latter image being a simile for my mind, mostly) but life has mostly squashed them like ... what is the natural predator of a damsel fly? A frog.  But I was having a conversation about need for realism in a short play, and decided to note my own view, which is: absolutely not.

When I say, realism, I don't mean in the sense of, Does that window really look like it opens on a conservatory/brothel/Parisian street?, or even Does it look like a window? the answer for which, unless you're Theatre Royal Bath or a ritzy West End theatre with the production budget of a drone squadron, the answer is almost certainly No. I'm talking about the convention of the fourth wall, which requires actors to prance before a darkened mass of largely silent onlookers, pretending their observers don't exist and the only 'reality' is the memorised words of the preordained situation they will replicate until it's time to go off stage, have a drink and a bath and go to bed before doing it all again.

Of course theatre, from 6th century Athens onwards, inevitably involves a bit of memorising and repeating situations. Otherwise it's impro, or games, or maybe a riot. To my mind the really significant element is acknowledgement of the audience, and that's what early theatre ~ and theatre in Elizabethan times ~ certainly did. I don't mean Brechtian ruthless exclusion of illusion, I mean acknowledgement that whatever the style of drama, this is an art form that occurs in real time ~ not a movie where scenes are re-shot for perfection but a shared act of human experience, and all the more precious and privileged for that. As Tim Crouch said: "the creative act is not performed by the artist alone... the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act."  In other words, what is special about theatre is that the audience is NOT inert, silent in the darkness, unable to press pause and go off to put the kettle on or answer the phone. Those people are present, they are the third element in that curious triangle that starts with the playwright, moves on to the director and team, and finally completes when the audience hears the words, watches their interpretation, and responds emotionally.

So that's why when I start a short play I turn as soon as possible to the audience, addressing them directly, insisting they realise they are a key part of this journey.  That's literally true ~ responses of laughter, or shuffling inattention, have huge impact on a performance. But it goes deeper than that. Picasso said the task of an artist is "to wake people up" and to me that means not hectoring them about my opinions but alerting them to become more strongly aware of their own.  Stand-up comics do it by creating delighted unease amongst their audience: no one is quite sure they may not be called out to account for themselves, whether they heckle, laugh, or sit straightfaced. I think drama that breaks the fourth wall, that addresses the audience direct with an appeal to listen and believe, makes a similar though internal 'call to account'. It challenges us as audience to engage with the challenge, to wonder what would I have done, and to connect more fully with emotions, whether empathy or aversion. Theatre is about being human, and there's nothing trivial or 'merely entertaining' about that.

Image: The Globe production of Twelfth Night (at the Apollo) 2012 ~ actors dressing on stage before the play opens. I don't know how historically authentic, but very appropriate, as Shakespeare is brilliant at breaking the fourth wall abruptly after emotional scenes, demanding that we never lose touch with the immediacy and impact of the action.