Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind’s Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils by Mark Pizzato (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind’s Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils by Mark Pizzato Beth Kattelman Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind’s Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils. By Mark Pizzato. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011; pp. 368. In his 2006 book Ghosts of Theatre and Cinema in the Brain, Mark Pizzato took a look at the ways in which the shared physiology of the human brain allows theatre and film to activate collective “ghosts” within the inner theatre of our minds. In this present book under review, Inner Theatres of Good and Evil, he builds upon that theory by expanding his exploration to the concepts of good and evil as manifested by the characters of gods, angels, and devils within theatre, film, and television. This book is thus another contribution to the ever-growing corpus of work on the intersection of cognitive theory and performance, but with a difference. Having bemoaned Bruce McConachie and Elizabeth Hart’s attacks on poststructuralism in his review of their influential 2006 book Performance and Cognition: Theatre Studies and the Cognitive Turn (Theatre Journal 59, no. 4 [2007]: 685–86), Pizzato attempts to reintegrate theories like Lacanian psychoanalysis into an empirically based cognitive model. Here, Pizzato explores the way in which Lacan’s real, imaginary, and symbolic orders each have a general correspondence to a human being’s brainstem/limbic system, right brain hemisphere, and left brain hemisphere, respectively, and notes that these also correspond to cognitive psychologist Merlin Donald’s evolutionary stages of cultural development in our hominid ancestors (9). In his introduction, “The Brain’s Evolving Theatre,” Pizzato lays out this correspondence and discusses how our mimetic culture influences evolutionary change. He notes that ideas and ideologies leave neural patterns within us, patterns that can be shared through performance and other mimetic acts. These memes, in turn, directly influence the evolution of our society. In chapter 1, “Neural and Prehistoric Signs of the Divine,” Pizzato begins his chronological look at the mimetic urge with a discussion of cave art, reminding us that we have the same “neural apparatus” as our ancient ancestors, and that our apparatus, “with its cultural connections, is still developing through mimesis, myth, and theory, in our current mass-media theatre” (19). The chapter lays out the scientific basis for the argument that follows and is dense with a litany of major figures and theories from the field of neurotheology. While this makes for difficult reading at times, it is necessary in order for Pizzato to give the reader sufficient background on the fields of study that he will draw on throughout the rest of the book. Chapter 2 advances the historical survey with a close reading of several major canonical texts through the lens of Lacanian psychoanalysis as it relates to cognitive science. Here, Pizzato maps disparate “God Concepts” to the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and notes how dramatic plot structures within well-known myths activate particular neurological pathways, thus creating a “Western cultural unconscious” (82). In this chapter, Pizzato discusses Egyptian coronation drama, the myth of Prometheus, The Bacchae, and The Oresteia, among others. In chapter 3, he moves to Lacanian-cognitive readings of biblical dramas like the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, the plays of the Wakefield Cycle, and Everyman. This chapter also offers an interesting discussion of the scapegoat’s function within society, and of the way in which a scapegoat character within drama activates human neuropsychology. Pizzato builds on the theories of evolutionary psychologist David Barash, whose work has shown that animals have an innate need to redirect aggression in order to subordinate stress, and this redirected aggression may take the form of scapegoating. Pizzato then posits that fictional characters who function as a scapegoat onstage offer the audience an outlet for this redirected aggression. Here, his ideas closely align with those found in René Girard’s theories on mimesis and scapegoating. In chapter 4, “From Renaissance Rebirths to Postmodern Experiments,” Pizzato moves on to the early modern world with discussions of canonical works, such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Hamlet, and Büchner’s Woyzeck. In order...