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Staging Consciousness: Theater and the Materialization of Mind. By William W. Demastes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002; pp. 193. $47.50 cloth.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2004

Mark Pizzato
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Extract

William W. Demastes's new book is a rare find. It shows a new direction for interdisciplinary theatre scholarship, combining drama and performance with cognitive science, fuzzy logic, and complexity theory. With this challenging combination, Demastes extends the significance of theatre beyond its conventional place in the humanities and proposes specific ties between an ancient art form and recent scientific discoveries. He demonstrates a post-postmodern or “neostructuralist” approach that dares to discuss “the emergent essence of life itself,” through a materialist, yet “nonpositivist” science of the drama. He thus offers a glimpse “of ’universal' consciousness” in theatre's “spiritual something more” (7–9).

Type
Brief Report
Copyright
© 2004 The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc.

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