Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance

This interdisciplinary study of devised theatre explores devising as research practice through the intersection of cognitive sciences and the arts.

It interrogates relationships between epistemology and cognition, action and aesthetics, and first-person experience and third-person investigation. Pairing practice research methodologies from theatre and performance with cognitive and neuroscientific approaches – both theoretical and empirical – it reveals new insights into the practices of collective creation in theatre.

To foreground the insider knowledge inherent to practice research, the main case studies are works created and performed by Maiya Murphy’s international movement-based devising collective, Autopoetics. Autopoetics’ work is contextualized in reference to major international devising companies including Complicité, Tectonic Theater Project, SITI Company, Frantic Assembly, and Gecko Theatre, and empirical and practice-based research on embodied performance including major dance projects such as The Watching Dance Project and Motion Bank. Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance proposes a model for breaking down disciplinary silos to freshly access the processes of collaborative practice and invigorate research in the humanities and arts.