Ana Margarida Abrantes studied German and English at the Universities of Aveiro, Essen and Innsbruck. She completed her master’s degree in cognitive linguistics in 2001, with a dissertation on the semantic and pragmatic dimensions of euphemism in the press. In 2008, she received her doctoral degree in German language and literature from the Catholic University of Portugal, with a thesis on a cognitive poetic approach to selected works by Peter Weiss. Between 2006 and 2009, she was visiting scholar at the Center for Semiotics of Aarhus University and at the Department of Cognitive Science of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA. In 2006, she joined the Research Center for Communication and Culture Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon, where she is currently senior researcher in the research line Culture, Translation and Cognition. She is Professor of Languages and Linguistics at the same university. Her publications include Meaning and Mind. A Cognitive Approach to Peter Weiss’ Prose Work (2010) and Cognition and Culture. An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (co-edited with Peter Hanenberg, 2011).
Rhonda Blair is Professor of Theatre at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Publications include Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies (2016, co-edited with Amy Cook); The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (2008); editing an edition of Richard Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons that includes documents from the American Laboratory Theatre (2010); articles in the anthologies Affective Performance and Cognitive Science, Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky, and Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn, and in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Survey, TDR: The Drama Review, and Theatre Topics among others. Board member, Centre for Kinesthetics, Cognition and Performance. Editorial board member, JDTC, Theatre Topics, and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. She has keynoted or given featured talks on applications of cognitive science to acting, theatre and performance in Paris, Rome, Kent, Wroclaw and Zurich, as well as in various U.S. cities. She directs and creates performances pieces. She was President of the American Society for Theatre Research, 2009–2012.
Shelby Brewster is Doctoral Student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she received the 2015–2016 Provost’s Humanities Predoctoral Fellowship. She received her MA in Theatre History, Literature, and Criticism from The Ohio State University in 2015. Her current research explores how theatre and performance artists use speculative strategies to critique the relationship between humans and their environments and imagine new ways of being human. Her work has been published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre and Foundation: The International Journal of Science Fiction.
Experience Bryon, PhD, trained as an actor and opera singer before becoming interested in interdisciplinary performance practice. She developed the Integrative Performance Theory for her PhD from Monash University in Australia, subsequently refined into Integrative Performance Practice. She is senior lecturer and course leader of the MA/MFA in Performance Practice as Research at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and has delivered keynotes at the Moscow Art Theatre’s International Movement Conference, the Embodied Cognition Symposium as part of the Society of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour at Goldsmith University and the Interdisciplinary Voice Studies Centre at Plymouth University. Her publications include Integrative Performance: Practice and Theory for the Interdisciplinary Performer (monograph, 2014), Performing Interdisciplinarity: Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries Through an Active Aesthetic (2017) and Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance (co-edited, 2017). Her research interests include Practice as Research, interdisciplinary performance practice(s), physical/vocal praxis and the emergence of transdisciplines as performance engages with other disciplines.
Sharon Marie Carnicke is Professor of Dramatic Arts and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California and a widely published author on performance in Russia, acting history and methods and film performance. She is internationally known for her groundbreaking book Stanislavsky in Focus, now in its second edition. Her other books include Anton Chekhov: 4 Plays and 3 Jokes, Checking out Chekhov, The Theatrical Instinct: The Work of Nikolai Evreinov, and with Cynthia Baron, Reframing Screen Performance. Her translation of Chekhov’s The Seagull won a Kennedy Center award. Her honours include grants and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the NEH and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, she is a director and master teacher of the rehearsal technique, Active Analysis, as created by Stanislavsky and developed by Maria Knebel. Most recently, she directed Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Norwegian National Academy of the Arts and taught an intensive workshop in Los Angeles for the National Alliance for Acting Teachers. Her work with scientists has leveraged active analysis for research on the expression of human emotion and interactive digital storytelling.
Amy Cook’s most recent book, Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting (2018), is called a ‘masterpiece that lies at the intersection of the humanities and cognitive science’ by Mark Turner. Cook is an associate professor in English and Theatre Arts at Stony Brook University, NY, and specialises in the intersection of cognitive science and theories of performance, with particular attention to Shakespeare and contemporary performance. She has published Shakespearean Neuroplay (2010) and essays in Theatre Journal, TDR, SubStance, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism and several edited volumes, including Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater (2015) and The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (2018).
Rachel DeSoto-Jackson is Assistant Professor of Applied Theater, director of SPATE (Simulated Patient/Applied Theater Ensemble) and managing/education director of Footlight Players youth theatre at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She holds an MFA in Performance Pedagogy, MA in Theatre and Performance Studies and an MA Certificate in Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. DeSoto-Jackson currently serves as a Board Member for the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed organisation and on the Editorial Board of the organisation’s journal. She also serves on the Steering Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons. As a Latina educator, scholar and theatre-maker, her work focuses on promoting equity, diversity and inclusion through Applied Theater methods. Her artistic practice, scholarship and teaching explore these practices within non-traditional settings and with interdisciplinary fields including healthcare, food and nutrition, psychology and criminology. DeSoto-Jackson has developed workshops, presentations, lectures and course designs on various applications of Applied Theatre. She currently teaches the course, The Performance of Caring, which builds skills in empathy, active listening and verbal/non-verbal communication to improve trust and patient/client interaction. She has been a grant recipient for her beginning research in simulated patient training.
Robin Dixon is Honorary Associate of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, Sydney University. His primary area of research interest is the stagecraft and performance of ancient Roman theatre, but he has taught widely on the history of Western theatre, and pursues a range of interdisciplinary research interests. His PhD thesis on the spatial dramaturgy of Plautine comedy was submitted in 2011, and since then he has taught at Sydney University and the National Institute of Dramatic Art, where he was Convener of Performance Practices 2015–2017. He is currently a research assistant on an ARC project examining historical rehearsal practices and an associate investigator on a project on Shakespearean performance funded through the Centre for the History of Emotions.
Stanton B. Garner, Jr., is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Theatre at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of The Absent Voice: Narrative Comprehension in the Theater (1989), Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama (1994, nominated for the Joe A. Callaway Prize and the Barnard Hewitt Award) and Trevor Griffiths: Politics, Drama, History (1999). His current research explores the kinaesthetic dynamics of theatrical spectatorship — how we respond to the movements we observe by vicariously enacting them — from phenomenological and cognitive perspectives. His book on this subject — Kinesthetic Spectatorship in the Theater: Phenomenology, Cognition, Movement – will be published in 2018 as part of its series Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Performance. Professor Garner’s essays and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Shakespeare Survey, Studies in Philology, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Comparative Drama, Essays in Theatre/Études théâtrales, Degrés, Theatre Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Survey, Theatre Research International and Modern Drama. With J. Ellen Gainor and Martin Puchner, he is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Drama (3rd ed., 2017). He received his PhD from Princeton University.
Thalia R. Goldstein, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Applied Development Psychology at George Mason University and the director of the Social Skills, Imagination and Theatre Lab. She studies how children participate in and create fictional worlds, how actors construct characters onstage and the effects of these activities on empathy, theory of mind, emotion regulation, compassion and altruism. Her other work focuses on how children and adults understand social categorisation at the fiction/reality border, and how children react to watching fictional worlds. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment of the Arts, The John Templeton Foundation, Arts Connection, the National Science Foundation, American Psychological Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security. She has won awards from the Society for Research in Child Development, American Psychological Association and the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media. She is editor of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (APA Division 10). Dr. Goldstein earned her B.A. from Cornell University in Theatre and Psychology, her PhD from Boston College in Developmental Psychology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship Yale University. She spent several years as a professional actress and dancer in New York City.
James Hamilton, Professor of Philosophy at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA, works on issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. An empirically and formally oriented philosopher, he works on topics having to do with the nature of theatrical enactment, how to model the reception of performances in theater, music, and dance and our interactions with puppets and other animated objects. He strives to make work that is informed by decision theory, formal learning theories, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, anthropology and history. He is author of the book, The Art of Theater. He has published articles in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Organon F, Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics, British Journal of Aesthetics, Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy, Performance Research, Puppet Notebook, Revue internationale de philosophie, Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Blackwell’s Guide to Aesthetics, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, Narratologia, as well as in a number of edited books. He is a member of the Theater and Performance Research Association, the American Society of Theater Research, Performance Philosophy, The British Society of Aesthetics, The American Society for Aesthetics, the Dance Scholars Association and the International Federation of Theater Research. hamilton@ksu.edu
Pil Hansen is an Assistant Professor in performing arts at the University of Calgary, a founding member of Vertical City Performance and a dance/devising dramaturg. Her empirical and PaR experiments examine cognitive dynamics of memory, perception and learning in creative processes. She developed the tool-set ‘Perceptual Dramaturgy’ and, with Bruce Barton, the interdisciplinary research model ‘Research-Based Practice.’ She has dramaturged 27 premieres and remounts, including award winning and both nationally and internationally touring works. Hansen’s scholarly research is published in TDR: The Drama Review, Performance Research, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Connection Science, Theatre Topics, Canadian Theatre Review, Peripiti, Koreografisk Journal, MAPA D3 and 13 essay collections on dramaturgy, PaR, cognitive performance studies and research methods. Hansen is primary editor of the essay collections Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (2015) and Performing the Remembered Present: The Cognition of Memory in Dance, Theatre and Music (2017) and first editor on three issues of Canadian Theatre Review and Performance Research. Hansen furthermore chairs the PSi working group on Performance and Dramaturgy.
Rick Kemp has received awards on both sides of the Atlantic for his work as an actor and director, including the Institut Français award for theatre, the British Telecom Innovations Award and the 2004 Heinz Endowments Creative Heights Award. He has worked with leading British companies and theatres such as The Almeida, 1982 Co., Complicité, The Oxford Playhouse, Riverside Studios, Tricycle Theatre, and Traverse Theatre, and was the co-founder and joint Artistic Director of Commotion. In the USA, he has worked with Unseam’d Shakespeare, the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Quantum Theatre, New York’s Perry Street Theatre, Squonk Opera, and internationally at Toronto’s Harbourfront Theatre, Warsaw’s Teatr Polski, Madrid’s Festival de Otono and at Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord theatre in Paris. Rick holds an MA from Oxford University, an MFA in Performance Pedagogy, and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies. He is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Neuroscience and Art, Professor of Theatre and the Head of Acting and Directing in the Department of Theater and Dance at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Publications include Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Performance (2012) and The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (2016).
Nancy Kindelan is Professor in the Department of Theatre at Northeastern University where she teaches courses in both the theatre department and the honours programme. Her PhD is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Dramatic Literature and Criticism. She has published widely, including her first book Shadows of Realism: Dramaturgy and the Theories and Practices of Modernism, chapters in Experiential Education: Making the Most of Learning Outside the Classroom and Course-Based Undergraduate Research: Educational Equity and High-Impact Practice as well as essays in Liberal Education, The Journal of General Education, Theatre Topics, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and New England Theatre Journal. Her second book, Artistic Literacy: Theatre Studies and a Contemporary Liberal Education, received a Special Honorable Mention for the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) in 2013. She is the founding editor for the book series, The Arts in Higher Education. In addition, she directs plays and speaks widely about how the signature pedagogy of theatre studies encourages transformative lifelong learning through creative thought, research and practice.
Jeanne Klein, Associate Professor Emerita, taught theatre for young audiences, elementary and secondary theatre education, child media psychology and US theatre history, among other courses, for 30 years at the University of Kansas. Over the course of her 40-year academic career, she directed over 50 productions for and with young people of all ages and led drama classes and workshops with elementary students. Her reception studies with child audiences earned several awards from the American Alliance for Theatre and Education, a grant from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America and international recognition at the Netherlands Theatre Institute in Amsterdam. As a long-time member of TYA/USA (the US chapter of ASSITEJ International), she attended many international theatre festivals for young audiences. In addition to book chapters, she has published in Youth Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, The Lion and the Unicorn, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth and Journal of American Drama and Theatre. In retirement, she remains active as an independent scholar, journal and book reviewer, and master gardener.
Gunter Lösel holds a PhD in Theater Studies as well as a diploma in psychology and is working as an improvisational actor with his own theatre groups “Improtheater Bremen” and “The Stupid Lovers.” Since 2014, he is heading the Research Focus Performative Practice at the Zurich University of the Arts. He has been publishing on the theme of improvisation since 2004 (with two books being available in English: The Play of Archetypes – Basic Forms of Human Encounter (2012) and Impro Talks (2017). His main fields of research are improvisation, creativity, embodiment and collaboration. Currently, he is the main applicant of the research project ‘Research Video’ (funded by the Swiss National Foundation), exploring the use of annotated video in the publication of artistic research. In parallel, he is doing research on artificial intelligences on the stage.
John Lutterbie is Professor at Stony Brook University where he has a joint appointment in the Department of Theatre Arts and the Department of Art. He serves as co-director of the Center for Embodied Cognition, Creativity and Performance. Lutterbie is currently working on two monographs, one on time-based aesthetics that explores the cognitive foundations of the embodied experience of art, and the other a textbook that engages students at the intersection of theatre/performance studies and cognitive science. He is the author of Toward a General Theory of Acting: Cognitive Science and Performance and Hearing Voices: Modern Drama and the Problem of Subjectivity. Articles have been published with Theatre Journal, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Performance Research, and other periodicals and books. Lutterbie is a co-editor with Nicola Shaughnessy of the series Science and Performance with Methuen. He can be contacted at john.lutterbie@gmail.com
David Mason is Chair of Theatre and director of Asian Studies at Rhodes College, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Ecumenica: Performance and Religion and a board member of the Association for Asian Performance. He is the author of The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre (2018), Brigham Young: Sovereign In America (2014) and Theatre and Religion on Krishna’s Stage (2009). He has published essays on Sanskrit drama in Theatre Research International and New Literary History, as well as essays on performance theory in journals including the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Journal of Popular Culture and Studies in South Asian Film and Media. He earned an MA in South Asian Studies and a PhD in Theatre Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Fellow.
Bruce McConachie recently became Emeritus Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His scholarship ranges among theatre history, historiography, cognitive criticism and the evolution of performance. Major works include Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance (with Thomas Postlewait, 1989), Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870 (1992), American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War (2003), Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre (2008), Evolution, Cognition, and Performance (2015) and three editions of Theatre Histories: An Introduction (co-written with others, 2006, 2010, 2016). For his scholarly contributions, the American Society for Theatre Research awarded McConachie the Barnard Hewitt and the Distinguished Scholar awards. In addition to teaching, directing and acting at the College of William and Mary and the University of Pittsburgh, McConachie has held visiting positions at Northwestern, Warsaw, Helsinki and Queens (Belfast) universities. He served as president of ASTR from 2001 to 2003, and continues to co-edit two publication series, Cultural Histories of Theatre and Performance (with Claire Cochrane) for Bloomsbury Methuen and Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance (with Blakey Vermeule). E-mail: bamcco@pitt.edu.
Erin B. Mee is the author of Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage, co-editor of Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, editor of Drama Contemporary: India, and co-editor of Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900–2000. She has written numerous articles for TDR, Theatre Journal, Performance Research and other journals and books. Her born-digital Scalar article ‘Hearing the Music of the Hemispheres’ won the ATHE-ASTR Award for Best Digital Article in 2016. She has directed at the Public Theater, NYTW, the Guthrie, the Magic Theatre and elsewhere in the USA, and with Sopanam in India. She is the Founding Artistic Director of This Is Not A Theatre Company with whom she has directed Pool Play 2.0, Café Play, Versailles 2015, Readymade Cabaret and numerous other productions. She is assistant arts professor, Department of Drama, Tisch, NYU. www.erinbmee.com
Peter Meineck holds the endowed chair of Professor of Classics in the Modern World at New York University. He was the founding director of Aquila Theatre where he produced and directed over 50 shows throughout the world and developed several national Arts and Humanities public programmes. He has published widely on ancient drama, most recently a monograph, Theatrocracy: Greek Drama, Cognition and the Imperative for Theatre (2017).
Vladimir Mirodan, PhD, FRSA, is Emeritus Professor of Theatre, University of the Arts London. Trained on the Directors Course at Drama Centre London, he has directed over 50 productions in the UK as well as internationally, and has taught and directed in most leading drama schools in the UK. He was vice-principal and director of Drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, principal of Drama Centre London and director of Development and Research Leader, Drama and Performance, Central Saint Martins. He is a former chairman of the Conference of Drama Schools and a deputy chair of the National Council for Drama Training. He is currently the chair of the Directors Guild of Great Britain Trust and of the Directors Charitable Foundation. Professor Mirodan’s research interests revolve around issues of acting psychology, in particular as this relates to the neuropsychology of gesture and posture. He has published on these topics and is currently completing The Actor and the Character, a book on the psychology of transformation in acting, to be published in 2018. Together with neuroscientists from University College London, Professor Mirodan is engaged in a research project on emotional contagion in acting, funded by the Leverhulme Foundation.
Ariel Nereson is Assistant Professor of Dance Studies at the University at Buffalo – SUNY. Her research focuses on embodiment and identity in movement-based performance across dance, theatre and musical theater. She is also a choreographer and dramaturg. Her book project, Democracy Moving: The Lincoln Dances of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, thinks across dance, performance, cognitive and American studies to analyse how these dances theorise and enact corporeality as historiographical strategy. Her essays can be found in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Studies in Musical Theatre, American Quarterly, Critical Stages and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, amongst others.
Helga Noice is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Elmhurst College; she earned her PhD in cognition at Rutgers University. During her early teaching years, Helga developed a great interest in specialised mental processes. She hypothesised that many older adults who were experiencing memory problems might benefit by learning the strategies of professional actors who routinely remember long scripts verbatim. As a result of this original insight, the Noices started investigating the connections between psychology and theatre and have pursued this interest for over 20 years. Their joint research, which combines theory and application, has resulted in a unique evidence-based theatrical intervention that has been successfully performed in dozens of retirement homes, hospital senior centres and select university programmes. Before and after taking a brief acting course, the older adults are given a battery of cognitive assessment tests. The dramatic results have revealed statistically significant improvements in memory, comprehension, creativity and problem solving. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Pew Charitable Trust, Schweizer Nationalfond, Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The latter has supported the Noices’ research with four consecutive multi-year grants. In addition to the dozens of peer-reviewed articles in professional books and journals, this theatrical intervention has been featured on over 25 national and international media outlets, including the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, PBS-TV, ABC-TV, New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the popular German magazine, Der Spiegel.
Tony Noice is currently Professor of Theatre at Elmhurst College, IL, and earned his PhD at Wayne State University in Michigan. He splits his time between the academic and professional worlds. In terms of the latter, he has performed in over a 100 productions under union contracts (Equity, SAG-AFTRA).
David Palmer taught philosophy and literature in the Humanities Department at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy until his retirement in June 2017. His interests in philosophy of mind, theories of the self and ethics led him to develop the course The Brain, Narrative, and the Self: Evolutionary Foundations of Tragedy and to explore the plays of Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. He has published on each of these dramatists and on Plato’s moral theory. In spring 2015, he was a Travis Bogard Fellow at Tao House, the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site in Danville, California. He is president of the Arthur Miller Society, a board member of the Eugene O’Neill Society and the editor of Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama: From O’Neill to the Twenty-First Century (2018). His degrees are from Harvard, The New School for Social Research and Columbia. Email: dpalmer@maritime.edu.
Esther Pascual (PhD, VU Amsterdam, 2003) is currently Senior Researcher and Assistant Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou under the ‘Hundred Talents’ programme. She is mainly working on what she has labelled ‘fictive interaction.’ She has published extensively on the topic in indexed journals, such as Cognitive Linguistics, Review of Cognitive Linguistics, Text & Talk and Pragmatics, as well as in her 2014 monograph Fictive Interaction: The Conversation Frame in Thought, Language, and Discourse and her 2016 co-edited volume The Conversation Frame: Forms and Functions of Fictive Interaction. Dr. Pascual has received various prestigious research grants to study the phenomenon from the Fulbright foundation and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, The University of Ghent, Belgium, the University of California, Berkeley, and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. She is the vice-president of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, an elected International Organizing Committee of the Language, Culture, and Mind conference series, and a permanent member of the scientific committee of the Spanish Association of Cognitive Linguistics. She is also a founding co-editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed international journal Language Under Discussion.
Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent where she founded the Centre for Cognition, Kinaesthetics and Performance. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of contemporary performance, applied and socially engaged theatre, identity, autobiography and neurodiversity. Her interdisciplinary collaborations explore the intersections between cognitive and affective neuroscience and theatre through creative and participatory research methods. She was Principal Investigator for the AHRC funded project ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autism.’ Her publications are wide ranging with essays in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (2013), the Wiley Handbook of Developmental Psychopathology (2017) and The Cognitive Humanities (2016), as well as her contributions to theatre and performance studies. She is the author of Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice (2012) and the edited collection Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being (2013). She is series editor (with Professor John Lutterbie) for Methuen’s Performance and Science volumes for which she is contributing a new collection (co-edited with Philip Barnard: Performing Psychologies: Imagination, Creativity and Dramas of the Mind (2018).
Gabriele Sofia is Associate Professor in Performing Arts at the Université Grenoble Alpes (France) and member of the Laboratory Litt&Arts (UMR 5316-CNRS). A PhD in Tecnologie digitali per la ricerca sullo spettacolo and Esthétique, Sciences et Technologies des Arts, he worked under the co-supervision of the Sapienza Università di Roma and the Laboratoire d’Ethnoscénologie (Université Paris 8). Since 2006, he has been carrying out a transdisciplinary research project on the neurophysiology of the actor and the spectator. From 2009 to 2013, he promoted and organised in Rome five editions of the International Conference ‘Dialogues between Theatre and Neuroscience.’ From 2014 to 2016, he organised in France three International Conferences on ‘Cognitive Sciences and Performing Arts.’ He edited the special issue ‘Theatre and Neuroscience’ for the Brazilian Journal on Presence Studies (vol. 4 n. 2, 2014) and the book Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience (2016 with Clelia Falletti and Victor Jacono). He is the author of the book Le acrobazie dello spettatore. Dal teatro alle neuroscienze e ritorno [The spectator’s acrobatics. From theatre to neuroscience and back] (2013). From 2012 to the present, he has been part of the Editorial Board of Teatro e Storia. For further information, see www.gabrielesofia.it.
Claire Syler is Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Missouri, USA. She holds a PhD in Theatre & Performance Studies (with an emphasis in the Learning Sciences) from the University of Pittsburgh, and a MFA in Directing from the University of Memphis. A scholar and artist, Claire has published articles in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, Theatre Topics, Youth Theatre Journal, and is a former Education Director of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival in Nashville, Tennessee. Her dissertation, ‘Actor Coaching: Talking Performance into Being,’ was awarded the honourable mention for the 2017 American Alliance of Theatre Education’s Distinguished Dissertation Award. Email: sylerc@missouri.edu
Evelyn Tribble is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Her books include Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (1993), Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering (with Nicholas Keene, 2011), Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare’s Theatre (2011) and Early Modern Actors and Shakespeare’s Theatre: Thinking with the Body (2017). She has also published articles in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Studies, Textual Practice, and ELH, among others. Email: evelyn_tribble@mac.com
Melissa Trimingham is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Director of the Centre for Cognition, Kinaesthetics and Performance at the University of Kent. She specialises in cognitive approaches to scenography, puppetry and costume; working with autistic people in performance; and modernist aesthetics. As co-investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council project ‘Imagining Autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autistic Spectrum Conditions’ (2011–2014), she designed and built drama environments for children on the autistic spectrum using puppetry, masks, costumes, sound, light and projection, and she has since developed Imagining Autism into training work with families and professionals in health and public services. Her monograph The Theatre of the Bauhaus: the Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer was published in 2011. Publications include a seminal article on ‘The Methodology of Practice as Research’ (2002); ‘Touched by Meaning: Haptic Affect in Autism’ in Affective Performance and Cognitive Science, Body, Brain and Being, (2013); ‘Ecologies of Autism: Vibrant Space in Imagining Autism’ in Scenography Expanded (2017); ‘Surprised by Beauty’ in Anthropology and Beauty: From Aesthetics to Creativity (2017) and jointly with Nicola Shaughnessy ‘Material Voices: Intermediality and autism’ Research in Drama Education (RiDE) (2016: 21.3, 293–308).
Darren Tunstall read English at Cambridge and trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, then later with Philippe Gaulier, Theatre de Complicite and David Glass. He was a professional actor, director, writer and movement director for over 20 years, working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, BBC, ITV, Film Four and many other theatre and television companies. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he was heavily involved in the ‘physical theatre’ movement in Britain, collaborating with such companies as The Right Size, Told by an Idiot, Theatre de Complicite, Peepolykus and Scarlet Theatre. In 2007, he moved full-time into teaching, and since 2015, he has been a lecturer in Acting at the Guildford School of Acting, University of Surrey. Publications include chapters in The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare, The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq and Time, Temporality and Performer Training, and articles in Shakespeare Bulletin and Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance. His first book Shakespeare and Gesture in Practice was published in 2016, and he is currently working on his second, The Evolutionary Imperative in Theatre and Film.