Synopses & Reviews
Engaging Audiences provides an insightful introduction to spectatorship from the perspective of cognitive studies. Using performances of several plays and a wide array of scientific evidence, Bruce McConachie examines the dynamics of conscious attention, mental concepts, empathy, emotion, and culture in theatre-going. This ground-breaking study challenges many of the current theories used to understand spectators and is a valuable resource for artists and scholars interested in how and why audiences enjoy performance.
Review
“Armed with a deep knowledge of the history of spectatorship, McConachie constructively engages with the recent findings of cognitive scientists to challenge fundamental assumptions about how and why we view and recall theatrical events. The result is a thoughtful, readable, and provocative work with important implications for critical theory, historiography, and production.”--John Emigh, Professor of Theatre, Speech, and Dance and of English, Brown University
"Engaging Audiences provides a major synthesis of theatre/performance and cognitive studies. McConachie finds just the right balance between scientific details and theatrical examples."--Philosophy and Literature
"In its formidable combination of clarity, engagement, and rigour, it present[s] a persuasive case that theatre and performance studies should pay more attention to the workings of the mind...A landmark in both theatre history and theories of audience reception."--Theatre Research International
Synopsis
Engaging Audiences asks what cognitive science can teach scholars of theatre studies about spectator response in the theatre. Bruce McConachie introduces insights from neuroscience and evolutionary theory to examine the dynamics of conscious attention, empathy and memory in theatre goers.
Synopsis
Engaging Audiences provides an insightful introduction to spectatorship from the perspective of cognitive studies. Using performances of several plays and a wide array of scientific evidence, McConachie examines the dynamics of conscious attention, mental concepts, empathy, emotion, and culture in theatregoing. This ground-breaking study challenges many of the current theories used to understand spectators and is a valuable resource to artists and scholars interested in how and why audiences enjoy performance.
About the Author
Bruce McConachie is Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh.
Table of Contents
Introduction * General Cognition for Theatre Audiences * Social Cognition in Spectating * Cultural Cognition in History * Epilogue: Writing Cognitive Audience Histories