The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre (review)

As a lifelong non-smoker, my pragmatic solution to the difficulty of being cast in any role that required onstage smoking was a simple one: herbal cigarettes. Friends objected vehemently. "Smokers in the audience won't be fooled for a second. They'll know it's not real." My counter-argument was equally vehement: I'm an actor - none of it's real. And yet there is undoubtedly something very powerful about the sense of smell, activated in this way within a theatre space, such that it can shatter (or reinforce) a fictional moment far more effectively than can one's peripheral awareness of other elements, such as stage lighting, scenery, or the simple fact of sitting with others in a darkened auditorium. Stephen Di Benedetto's book is a thought-provoking exploration of just these kinds of issues and reminds us forcibly that, at a fundamental, biological level, we are sensing animals before we are rational beings.

The opening chapter sets out the basic premise: by better understanding the biology of sensory perception, we will be able to acquire fresh insights into performance and even (a bold claim) to "determine how a theatre of the future may be wilfully created" from such knowledge (5).

After this starter course, which takes us through prevailing theories of mind, brain, and cognition, we are ready for the main dish: a close examination of each of the five senses in turn and of their respective roles in determining our experience of performance. Sight, touch, and hearing each merits its own chapter, while taste and smell are combined in one, since, as Di Benedetto points out, they are so difficult to disentangle, even in physiological terms. The final chapter considers how the different senses combine within our brains to create a holistic and highly subjective web of associations and neural pathways, and the book concludes with a wonderful extended metaphor comparing the partially preserved remains of Sicilian aristocrats with the fragments and traces of performance discoverable through archival research.

This cognitive analysis of the processes of theatre is fascinating and timely; yet there are inherent dangers to be negotiated along the way. For one thing, reducing our perceptions of the physical world to the chemical and electrical impulses involved can lead toward a more generally reductive view of the creative process itself. And, at times, cognitive analysis tempts Di Benedetto to draw what might be considered self-evident conclusions: "As these sounds are manipulated in theatrical practice, an active listener in a shared atmosphere will be able to engage in the work" (142). There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this.

But there is much to savour here, too. Di Benedetto is clearly a devotee of contemporary performance in its many incarnations, and his case studies are drawn from a wide array of work, including that of Robert Wilson, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Dogtroep, Survival Research Laboratories, Stellarc, Franko B, Lydia Lunch, and many others; he also examines non-theatre-based experiences, ranging from the Burning Man Festival to simulated border crossings in Parque Alberto, Mexico. Given this range of investigation, the book's title is unhelpful. Claiming to speak about contemporary theatre, Di Benedetto is actually concerned with the much wider field of contemporary performance. (The existence of an earlier volume, The Senses in Performance, edited by Sally Banes and André Lepecki, to which Di Benedetto contributed a chapter, may have inspired the misnomer.) Di Benedetto has personally attended an impressive variety of such events, and he writes engagingly and passionately about all of them. He is less enthusiastic when it comes to mainstream theatre, which is a shame, because, at their best, his descriptions of the sensory reception of performance are enlightening, and it would have been good to hear him write with similar passion about the engagement of the senses in conventional performance, too.

Contemporary performance and performance art, however, undoubtedly provide a rich seam to mine, if...