Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham, Assistant Professor of Theatre, will deliver a talk at the international Cognitive Futures in the Arts and the Humanities Conference in Messina, Italy on June 29. Her presentation, “To Hold or Not to Hold: The Question of How a Script becomes Action in the Actor’s Body,” explores the connections between cognition and performance. The presentation examined some of the cognitive processes of two different acting techniques, centering attentional and memory differences. Applying distributed network models (as defined by Michael W. Cole) to each technique, she argued that Active Analysis promotes more cognitive flexibility than more traditional approaches. Greater cognitive flexibility allows for more immediate and fruitful task employment, creating the fully embodied performative action at the heart of artistic drama.
Joelle Ré Arp-Dunham is a consent-based director, actor, intimacy choreographer, and educator in both theatre and film. In addition to directing over 50 productions and teaching countless acting classes, she was the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the professional nonprofit Circle Ensemble Theatre Company in Athens, Georgia for 8 years. Her current scholarly research applies concepts from behavioral neuroscience to Stanislavsky’s methodologies and theories to give performance scholars a richer and more precise understanding of Stanislavsky’s work, while allowing teachers and directors to zero in on the techniques that are most likely to help them achieve their goals- all in safer, braver spaces for the entire production team. She currently teaches acting, directing, voice, devising and consent and staged intimacy.