Cognitive Ecologies in Theatre History, Training and Performance

This presentation and performance will explore the development of Edwin Hutchins’ concept of “cognitive ecologies” in theatre and performance and apply it to new areas of inquiry for practitioners, trainers and historians. The framework of cognitive ecologies was first advanced by Hutchins in the cognitive sciences to explain the vast network of relationships that bear on the practice of navigation in seafaring. This has been productively extended into theatre and performance by scholars such as Evelyn B. Tribble, John Sutton, Teemu Paavolainen, and Cohen Ambrose. This panel will present two case studies: the history and practices around the development of the Western “actor-creator“ in the twentieth century and the scenographic action To You <-> To Me, which uses a handmade object, inefficient aesthetics and audience participation to create a collaborative action-dialogue. Through this exploration of performance history and contemporary practice, the presenters will consider how the theoretical framework of cognitive ecology can be further developed to counter tendencies of thinking about performance in history and practice as a singular object, but rather, how it unfolds in a dynamic network of relations and why that matters.
The first presentation will introduce key concepts in cognitive ecology that have been useful to theatre and performance practitioners and scholars. Through a case study of the development of the idea of and training practices for the “actor-creator” it will point to ways that a cognitive ecological approach can better comprehend practices whose development cuts across traditions, reveal the enduring presence of lesser-known experiments and contributions of unrecognised people and articulate how the “actor-creator” necessitated a new kinds of training systems.
The second portion will be a performance in which the artist asks to be lifted and supported by the audience. The audience in this performance are invited to contribute critically, to judge, observe, participate, collaborate, conspire, make their own stories, and allow themselves to be exposed within an ecosystem of action composed of cord, fabric, and trust. This action-performance therefore, understands the relationships between the audience as a cognitive environment mutually dependent on the ecosystem of the performance environment (cognitive scenography).
The third presentation will be a discussion on this project in light of cognitive ecology and of the ‘scenographic contraption’ method of the artist used in this performance project to generate but also highlight a shared cognitive ecology. By bringing together action, dialogue, history and cognitive ecological theory the presenters will explore the coordination of embodied activity across multiple spaces, bodies and times, track the potentials in the dynamics of larger ecologies of intelligence and attend to the ways in which the practices and aesthetics of inefficiency produce particular kinds of cognitive engagements.