Performing Psychologies offers new perspectives on arts and health, focussing on the different ways in which performance interacting with psychology can enhance understanding of the mind. The book challenges stereotypes of disability, madness and creativity, addressing a range of conditions (autism, dementia and schizophrenia) and performance practices including staged productions and applied work in custodial, health and community settings. Featuring case studies ranging from Hamlet to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the pioneering work of companies such as Spare Tyre and Ridiculusmus, and embracing dance and music as well as theatre and drama, the volume offers new perspectives on the dynamic interactions between performance, psychology and states of mind. It contains contributions from psychologists, performance scholars, therapists and healthcare professionals, who offer multiple perspectives on working through performance-based media. Presenting a richly interdisciplinary and collaborative investigation of the arts in practice, this volume opens up new ways of thinking about the performance of psychologies, and about how psychologies perform.
Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'
She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).
Amy Cook, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English at Stony Brook University, New York, USA, is the author of
Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science, (2010) and essays in, among others,
Theatre Journal,
TDR,
SubStance, the
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism,
Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, the
Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (forthcoming). She was the co-chair of the Working Group in Cognitive Science and Performance for American Society for Theatre Research from 2010-2014.
Philip Barnard is Professor of English at the University of Kansas, USA. He has published 11 books as author, editor or translator and is the Textual Editor for the Charles Brockden Brown Electronic Archive and Scholarly Editions.