Linguistic bodies: cognitive science and Stanislavsky’s last words

Abstract

This article takes key areas of cognitive science - including enactivism, 4E cognition, cognitive ecologies, and cognitive linguistics – to explore the connections between these relatively new scientific fields, and the last work of Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky’s work in his final phase in the 1930s, his “last words”, if you will, is known as Active Analysis, which requires actors to discover the underlying structures of action before memorizing dialogue. Actors "study" the play by moving between improvising scenes on their feet, returning to the text, moving back and forth until their improvisation captures it and the text can be memorized. Both the cognitive sciences and Active Analysis provide tools for engaging the dynamic nature of bodies, action, selves, and language.

Keywords:

• active analysis
• cognitive science
• linguistic bodies
• Stanislavsky
• text

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

2 Among other theoretical approaches that reframe the view of the actor’s body and action are new materialism, which investigates how matter operates in a range of processes – technological, environmental, and social, among others – and posthuman feminism and feminist new materialism, which question binaries and hierarchies in life. These also consider the centrality of process and interrelationships/interpenetration in life.

3 For more on this, see the work of cognitive linguists and philosophers Lakoff and Johnson (1999), Fauconnier and Turner (2002), Mark Turner (2014).

4 Parts of this sections are derived from Rhonda Blair and John Lutterbie, “Introduction: Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism’s Special Section on Cognitive Studies, Theatre and Performance,” and introductory materials in Rhonda Blair and Amy Cook, Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rhonda Blair

Rhonda Blair Professor Emerita, Southern Methodist University, researches applications of cognitive science to acting, directing and text. Publications include The Actor, Image and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (Routledge), Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies (co-edited with Amy Cook, Methuen), and editing Richard Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons: Documents from the American Laboratory Theatre (Routledge). She was president of the American Society for Theatre Research 2009-12, and received the 2019 American Society for Theatre Research Distinguished Scholar award. She has published numerous articles and given keynotes and featured talks internationally. Besides the cognitive sciences, her areas of interest include theatre and politics, feminism and theatre, alternative performance, and Anton Chekhov. She has directed and performed in over 70 productions and has created original solo and devised performance work.