An exploration into aesthetic experience and pleasure in the theatre spectator

Abstract

This thesis aims to explore how pleasure is experienced in the theatre spectator. In order to do this, the workings of various brain processes associated with feelings of pleasure are analysed. These processes were all found to be motivated by the emotional areas of the brain, in particular the dopaminergic VTA 'seeking system'. Chapter 1, 'Perception', discusses the active role of the viewer when searching for significance in a work of art. Dopamine is a chemical associated with feelings of pleasure and is released when it is important for the perceiver to pay attention and during decision-making. By providing the spectator with just enough information to be able to form associations while at the same time remaining ambiguous, the performance text activates the VTA, thus grasping the attention of the spectator. The mechanism may have evolved as a survival technique to identify camouflaged predators or prey. Chapter 2, 'Multiple consciousnesses' discusses how this attention mechanism may be the foundation to the pleasure felt when interpreting ambiguous information such as puns, poetry, metaphor, or finding significance in a performance text. The chapter analyses the ability to see one thing as something else. The dual image theory or 'Seeing as' may also be the neurological foundation to the human's ability to have an emotional response to the events on stage whilst at the same time recognize the artificiality with which the performance is made. In chapter 3, 'empathy', Rizzolatti's mirror neuron and the application of a forward model system is discussed as the key to understanding how a spectator responds to the actions of the actor and why some actors are able to hold the audience's attention and. others are not. The viewer anticipates another's action by reading the 'prefixes' produced by the doer's intentions and 'rehearsing' that action inwardly. He then applies a 'theory of mind' in order to understand the thought process which generated that action. Theory of mind and empathy have a neurological foundation, without which the appreciation of a theatre performance would not be possible. Studies show that a forward model system cannot be applied to 'mechanical movements'. An analysis is made of the qualities of those movements as compared with what theatre practitioners would call 'intentional actions'. While it is proven that dopamine is released during the decision-making process of the doer, it may be that, in observing and thus inwardly imitating those actions by applying a forward model system, dopamine is released too in the observer who mirrors und anticipates the consequences of those actions. The importance of this could be fundamental. If this hypothesis is indeed proven to be well founded, then the responsibility incumbent on the theatre performer will be seen to be considerable.