Deirdre, McLaughlin (2019) Systems of experiencing: a reconfiguration of notions of experiencing within acting practice drawing upon Stanislavski and enactivism. Doctoral thesis, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Abstract

Over the past decade, research dialogues in the fields of cognitive science, dynamic systems, and performance have provided valuable insights into the guiding concepts and principles of actor training. This thesis offers a critical examination of the experience of acting utilizing the enactive approach to cognition and proposes a reframing of Stanislavski's Plan of Experiencing (1935) as a model for the actor's conscious experience in the act of acting. Drawing from Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's (1980, 1992) perspective on the 'embodied condition of the human mind', this thesis argues for a reconsideration of the actors' experience of experiencing that emphasises an understanding of the dynamic relationship between the actor's body, brain and world. Chapter 1 introduces systems thinking and a 'systems view of life' (Capra and Luisi 2014, Capra 2015) as a methodology for addressing the dynamic nature of consciousness and argues for a move towards a transdisciplinary approach to the conscious experience of acting. Chapter 2 positions David Chalmers's "the hard problem" alongside current applications of cognitive science to actor training and introduces embodied cognition and the enactive approach as a critical framework for understanding human experience. Chapters 3 frames enactivism as an approach to perception and perceptual content where action is constitutive of perception and perceiving is a way of actively exploring an environment. Rooted in the belief that cognition is situated both physically and socially, this research then offers a re-configuration of the received thinking around the concepts of embodiment, action, perception, emotion and self as they are directly and indirectly incorporated within the framework and methodology of the enactive approach to cognition and the Stanislavski system. In chapter 4, I offer an original cognitive architecture and theory of experiencing of the actor in the act of acting as articulated through a troubling of Stanislavski's Plan of Experiencing (1935) reconceived through the enactive approach to cognition.