The Mind on Stage: On the Relation between Theater and Cognition

Abstract

This paper addresses two central topics that concern the interplay between theatricality and cognition. The first is the intrinsic theatrical nature of human cognition, as it is traceable in human communication. The fundamental schemas that allow us to make sense of the world and of experience are based on human intersubjective exchange. The need to convey contents of the individual cognition, to share them with others generates highly creative conceptual strategies such as conceptual metaphor or blending. In the communication of these contents, humans often engage in scenarios of representation or theatricality, by which they dramatize the contents of mental spaces other than the one of their immediate reality.The second topic this paper addresses comes in the sequence of this first one: if theatricality is a constitutive feature of human cognition and communication, it is further enhanced in the experience of theater as genre, in the encounter with the aesthetic works of drama, both as text and performance. This idea is explored on the basis of a cognitive approach to Peter Weiss’ play Marat/Sade (1963).