Roles and Rabbits: Conceptual Blending of Theatrical Roles in White Rabbit Red Rabbit

8/13/2019 Roles and Rabbits: Conceptual Blending of Theatrical Roles in White Rabbit Red Rabbit

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ROLES AND RABBITS:

THEATRE AUDIENCES AND CONCEPTUAL BLENDING IN WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT

by

Kelsey Jacobson

Queens University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

(April, 2013)


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2. CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

In considering the cognitive processing of audience members, the first questions that

arise are what defines an audience and what is their relationship to a performance. If, after all,

theatre is rooted in ideas of collaborative, participatory ritual, the audience must be participating

in some way or to some extent with what is being presented. Susan Bennett's Theatre Audiences

postulates such a necessary participation of the audience and their integral role in the creation of

a performance: the event is not a finished product in the same way as a novel or poem. It is an

interactive process, which relies on the presence of spectators to achieve its effects" (67). She

further considers historical approaches to spectating which she suggests also promote an active

spectatorship: in Ancient Greece, the audience was highly active, akin to the chorus, who were

not separated by a physical or spiritual boundary from the performance (Bennett 3). The move

towards the present day physical passivity of sitting quietly in an assigned seat followed a

change in architecture in the 1850s that saw strict behavioral codes and a distinct separation of

audience from actors by a proscenium arch. Reactions to this shift were not wholly accepting,

suggesting a balking at an apparently inactive spectatorship: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti for

example attempted to induce active participation on behalf of audiences through the use of

itching powder or seating conflicts to incite fights as a means of eliciting surprise and

amazement from his audiences (7). A move toward apparent physical inaction, however, may

not indicate a wholly inactive audience; though Bennett's work points to an active engagement

on the part of the audience that is effectual, physicalized, and easily observed, it may be

suggested that active participation may also be achieved through cognitive or cerebral activity.

For example, though also preceding much research into cognitive studies, Marco de Marinis

begins to articulate in his workDramaturgy of the Spectator a less physical yet still active

participation of the audience, stating that spectators are asked to engage in "perception,


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interpretation, aesthetic appreciation, memorization, emotive and intellectual response" (de

Marinis 101). Though he does not, or is perhaps unable to, articulate exactly what these

processes of activation are, he believes that through the "manipulation of the audience by the

performance . . . the performance seeks to induce in each spectator a range of definite

transformations, both intellectual...and affective... [and] may even urge its audience to adopt

particular forms of behavior such as in political theatre" (de Marinis 101), speaking of a primary

cognitive activation that may later result in a physical behavior change of the kind which

Bennett alludes to.

As more advanced cognitive studies and a much stronger understanding of

neuroanatomical physiology have developed, audience theorists became aware of the effects that

viewership and voyeurism have physically on the brain, the resulting intellectual or emotional

reactions, and potential behavioral effects. Amy Cook, for instance, suggests that the cognitive

work involved in observing performance is actually equivalent to physical involvement through

her consideration of the mirror neuron system: "Imagining and understanding are the same

thing... if you can't imagine picking up a glass or seeing someone picking up a glass, then you

can't understand that sentence ... this suggests that language is less a system of communicating

experience than actually being experience" (589). In other words, in order to suspend one's

disbelief and imagine that the actor onstage is actually holding a dagger in his hand, even though

it appears his hand is empty, an audience member must recall what it is to hold a dagger,

invoking the same cognitive pattern of activation one would if one were to actually do it. New

cognitive and scientific explorations also posit that, "When they pay attention to intentional

human action (in a performance of anywhere else), spectators unconsciously mirror the actions

of others and use this cognitive information to read their minds directly" (McConachie 79).

Thus, "[al]though audiences must also interpret spoken language and engage in other mental


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operations when they watch actors performing, interactional simulation seems to be primary"

(McConachie 79), speaking to the process of mental simulation or cognitive activity in

perception as being akin to actively engaging with the performance. Thus, regardless of whether

the active participation of the audience is easily observable or not, it seems that active cognition

on behalf of the spectator is responsible for the implicit and integral collaboration of audiences

with the performances they observe.

While mirror neurons suggest potential for empathetic understanding in spectators, a

specific theory developed by Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner called conceptual blending

seems apt to describe the cognitive activation of theatre spectators as they balance frames of

understanding and the applicability of fictional performance to real life. Turner describes it in

The Cognitive Study of Art, Language, and Literature as the mental operation of combining

two mental packets of meaning two schematic frames of knowledge or two scenarios, for

example selectively and under constraints to create a third mental packet of meaning that has

new, emergent meaning (10). In other words, it is sort of a cognitive network formed by

combining mental schemas or spaces, which are in turn described as "temporary containers for

relevant information about a particular domain (Coulson), in order to create new understanding.

In its most basic form, such a conceptual integration network consists of four connected mental

spaces: two partially matched input spaces, a generic space constituted by the commonalities

between the two inputs, and the blended space, which is constructed through selective projection

from the inputs. Seanna Coulson specifically outlines the example of trashcan basketball

(throwing crumpled paper into a trashcan) as a method of illustrating the process of conceptual

blending. In this example, frames from established domains (known as inputs) are combined to

yield a hybrid frame (a blend or blended model)." In other words, the concepts of basketball and

trash disposal are inputs combined to yield the new and novel activity of trashcan basketball. In


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one mental space (what we might term reality), the ball is paper, and in another (fiction,

abstraction, or imagination) the ball is a basketball. In the blended space, which is a combination

of the reality of the situation and the fictional construct, it is trashcan basketball.

Although there has not been a great deal of research as yet into connections between

conceptual blending and theatre, there has been research conducted into relating blending

theories with semantics, semiotics, and literature, in particular in the realm of metaphor in which

a reader must maintain both the original and analogy in the same mental space in order to draw

the comparison. According to Coulson, who has examined the use of cognitive conceptual

blending in literature and semantics, it is a set of operations for combining cognitive models in

a network of mental spaces, such that people can integrate semantic or linguistic information,

background information, and contextual information in a series of mental spaces, and combine

them to relate to the situation at hand, helping, for example, to use metaphors in which reality is

balanced with an abstract metaphorical image to bring about new understanding of a situation or

experience. For example, if the phrase "you're digging your own grave" is uttered in reference to

something that was said, observers blend the reality of what was said with the imagined image of

digging a grave to determine a value judgment or "new" information with regard to the situation.

The application of conceptual blending towards theatre follows logically from its application to

semantics and metaphor, as theatre similarly encourages audiences to view a performance of

fiction or imagination while balancing the 'real' quality of the actor bodies, set pieces, theatre

spaces, props etc. Julia Walker refers to the necessity on the part of an audience to actively

balance two different inputs during observation of a theatre performance, referring to the

"double consciousness of the theatrical event... both imaginatively inside it, feeling what the

character feels, while practically outside of it." (37). Further, she describes theatre as "an art

form devoted to just this kind of oscillation, offering us a glimpse of the world as it can be


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imagine from an objective analytical viewpoint and an experience of the word as registered

within our body' viscera in the form of an affective engagement that is very much in the moment

and real'" (Walker 38-39). In this diagram below (figure 1), then, blending is at work when

audiences observe performance in the following way: mental space or input one (1) is that of the

real world or audience member and his own reality; mental space or input two (2) is the

abstracted fiction, story, or playworld; and the blended space is the result of a selected projection

of each input, to bring about new understanding of the real world.

To further illustrate the applicability of conceptual blending to theatre before specifically

engaging White Rabbit Red Rabbit, Karen Wards paper Polysemy, Metatheatricality, and

Affective Piety: A Study of Conceptual Blending in the York Play The Crucifixion provides a

useful model for the examination of a theatrical event through conceptual blending, as it

examines the links between metatheatricality and blending, and the resultant effects on

audiences. Ward's paper specifically examines The York Corpus Christi Play The Crucifixion,

Figure 1


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part of the York cycle in which local tradesmen or guild performers would take to the stage to

bring to life the stories of the Bible. She bases her paper on the examination of the

metatheatricality of the piece, citing Patricia Waugh's definition of metafiction as a term given

to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an

artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality (Ward 128)

to suggest that all metafiction, therefore, can be seen as requiring the audience or readership to

perform an act of conceptual blending. In metafiction and metatheatre, the concepts of fiction

and reality are essentially being blended and what emerges is a third mental space that is

occupied by the significance of the relationship between these two seemingly opposing ideas"

(Ward 128). According to Ward, several instances of metatheatricality occur throughout the

piece. For example, real-world pinners who made pins, needles, and similar items (Fitzgerald

and Sebastian 103) essentially had product placement as they acted out the scene in which Jesus

is nailed to the cross (Ward 131). In another moment, Jesus comments that the soldiers who affix

him to the crucifix know not what they do," a line traditionally read as implying that they were

ignorant of the significance of their actions. In reality, the soldiers were just local actors who

really did not have any idea what they were doing in terms of practical knowledge of both acting

and affixing a body to a cross irony that would not go unnoticed by a local audience. She

specifically goes on to say that the breaking of the metatheatrical frame in this case is often

humorous, which leads audiences to laugh, then become appalled at their laughing at such

serious subject matter: a cycle of humour-laughter-guilt through which the breaking of the

mimetic frame [or, fictional world]. would ideally result in a highly affective experience of

the Passion and redemptive theology (Ward 127). In other words, audience members would

themselves experience a microcosmic sin and guilt cycle by laughing inappropriately then

feeling regretful of their actions, living out the story's content. From this, then, conceptual


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blending may be a powerful tool for making audiences apply what they are viewing to their own

personal, real lives; creating a third creative mental space that conflates aspects of fiction and

reality to consider applicability of the performance to their own lives.

White Rabbit Red Rabbitby Nassim Soleimanpour seems just as aptly poised for an

application of conceptual blending through its consistent fluctuation between theatrical roles.

Written by twenty-nine-year-old Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, White Rabbit Red

Rabbit must be performed each night by a different actor, who has never read or seen it before.

Instead, the performer, usually a well-known local or regional actor, is handed a sealed envelope

the moment they walk onstage containing the script. They open it and begin, with no director,

very little set, and minimal guidance, receiving only a few simple reading instructions and told

to "prepare an ostrich impersonation" beforehand. What follows is essentially a "cold read" as

the actor reads the script for the first time. The content of the show itself is at times playful and

at times disturbing, examining the experience of a generation growing up under repression,

compliance, and control. The actor acts primarily as a conduit for the words of the playwright,

telling allegorical stories about entrenched and systemic conformity. One such story tells of a

rabbit that attends a circus with a strict set of rules about covering one's ears, while another

centers on the sadistic experiment of an uncle who observes the instinctive process of rabbits

who would savage any individual rabbit who showed initiative. Meanwhile, the audience is

encouraged to participate, each being assigned a number and variously asked to run up on stage

to assist in the performance, keep meticulous notes, donate carrots and red hats to the cause, take

photos, and actively involve themselves by engaging with Nassim via email or Facebook. They

themselves are metatheatrically engaged as "obligatory" volunteers who comply and obey with

the wishes of the script and an absent playwright often without a second thought, despite the

relative powerlessness of words and the complete absence of a physical presence forcing them to


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do as instructed. As one of the participants in a post-show interview mused, "the control isn't in

the actor or in the performer or in the audience its in the author who's not even here . . . I've

never seen a show where the words are in control" (WRRR Interview). This constant shifting of

theatrical roles among actor, audience, and playwright breaks the fictional world frame and

encourages blending with the real world.


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3. METHODOLOGY

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was performed at Queen's University in September 2012 a total

of four times. Following each of the four performances, personal interviews with audience

members were immediately conducted in an adjacent room, in groups of one to six participants

using a portable recording device. Those interviewed were all university students who had

participated in one or more of the performances as an audience member, with the majority being

undergraduate drama students. The questions asked were as follows:

1. How do you feel/what emotion are you experiencing right now?

2. How would you describe the performance?

3. What did you find unique about the experience?

4. What percentage weight out of a combined total of 100% would you assign each of the roles

of: the playwright currently in Iran, the character of the playwright, and the actor in terms of the

prominence you felt each one had?

5. What is the role of the actor? The audience?

6. What did you know about the show prior to attending?

7. Is there any thing else you would like to add?

Interviews were also conducted with the four actors who performed the script via an

email questionnaire. These subjects were asked the following:

1. Of the three "personas" onstage - you as actor, the character of the playwright, and the real

world playwright currently in Iran - did you feel one was most dominant? If you had to assign

each of them a weight, totaling all three to 100%, what percentage would each have in terms of

salience throughout the show?

2. Did you attempt to quell your own personal additions to the text and just play the character?


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Why or why not?

3. What was the experience of having real world audience members onstage with you? Did you

feel responsible for them? Dominant over them? Camaraderie and fellowship?

Following the completion of interviews, the transcription of all interviews into usable,

anonymous data was completed. Verbatim excerpts from these interviews are included here and

cited as (WRRR Interview).


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4. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Turning towards White Rabbit Red Rabbit,the activation and application of cognitive

conceptual blending is apparent through several instances of poignant and noticeable blends

between the roles of actor, audience, and author, as well as blends between the "fakeness" and

"realness" of stage properties.

Perhaps most notably, the actors must balance commitment to character with their own

personal reactions to the text that is at times inflammatory1, blending together the roles of

audience member and actor. Thus, at the same time that the audience is watching the "play"

being performed, they are also watching the performer react to their own performance. In other

words, rather than for example

Hamlet, during which the

audience is encouraged to

unequivocally watch Hamlet the

character rather than Laurence

Olivier (Figure 2), in White

Rabbit, Red Rabbit spectators

are watching both an actor and a

character. For example, one night actress Kim Renders performed the show, playing the role of

Nassim. However, throughout the performance, the audience watched not only Nassim the

character, but also Kim, the person, as she reacted to the text she was delivering, turning herself,

in essence, into an additional audience member. As Susan Bennett articulates, there is something

boundary-blurring, or, one might suggest, blending, of these moments when the actor on-stage

1For example, the actor is directed to say the following to an audience volunteer onstage: "YOU PRICK. YOU

PIECE OF SHIT. You think you're so fucking smart? Should I get them to beat you? Do you want this one to rip

your FUCKING GUTS OUT?! FUCK YOU!!" (White Rabbit 30)

Figure 2


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becomes a non-actor, siding themselves instead with the audience, citing an example from Jan

Muka!ovsk"of that moment when a comedian makes a co-actor laugh by his performance and

the boundary between the stage and the auditorium runs across the stage itself: the laughing

actors are on the audiences side (qtd in Bennett 12). Chris Haydon, artistic director of the Gate

theatre, in fact, actually describes White Rabbit Red Rabbitas an observation of "[t]he

spontaneity of an actor reading a script for the first time and discovering it with the audience,

[which] gives complete authority and power to the writer's voice, and the way that voices control

people is an intrinsic theme in the play" (qtd in Manzoor). In White Rabbit Red Rabbit,

therefore, the lone actor is at once both performing and listening to, reacting openly, and

experiencing for the first time the text.

This tenuous shifting back and forth between actor-as-character and actor-as-audience

member is notable at several points in the production, especially those times that call for

aggression, controversy, or inflammatory dialogue as the actor reacts personally to the words

they say. For example, at one point in the script, the actor is required to swear profusely at an

audience member. At Queen's University's four performances, the four actors who each took the

stage for one night were all professors or past professors from the Drama Department, largely

performing to an audience composed of their current or past students. The dichotomy between

the commitment of the actor to their job to bring the script to life and their relationship to the

majority of most of the audience as their students prompted a challenging dialectic. This tension

was articulated by two actors after the performance: "my job as an actor is to surrender myself to

the character and his destiny," yet, "I was constantly aware that those who came up on stage

were all students. A colleague who saw the performance that night mentioned that I was caring

of them and treated them kindly even though the script didnt always allow for that . . . That kind

of responsibility also comes from years of experience as a teacher" (WRRR Interview). One


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actor further suggested that "there were a couple of moments in which it seemed to me that the

effect of the performance demanded that the audience be let in on my personal discomfort,"

(WRRR Interview) speaking to the poignancy of such moments of conflict, and the resultant

attention drawn to the blend between actor and audience. Performers, further, are given no

instructions with regard to costuming, meaning that some of the performers at Queen's

University wore clothing akin to what they wear in the classroom, further pushing a

consciousness of the blend, as spectators struggled to reconcile the visual of their "professor"

with the imaginative conception of the play and Nassim, the character. Thus, rather than

supported by the usual costuming, physicality, vocal adaptation, and, at least relative,

depersonalization of typical performance, White Rabbit Red Rabbit does not ease spectators into

conceptual blending but rather challenges the process by maintaining elements of the real world

in the fictional as actors in their regular clothes, with potentially personal relationships with the

spectators are introduced with their real names. The audience members therefore find themselves

oscillating between observing the real life person and the fictive storyline.

This challenge was echoed by those spectators interviewed as they voiced the difficulty

of balancing the 'reality' of the actor and the 'fiction' of the script: "[This was] one of the only

theatrical pieces that has asked me whether or not this is real. Is this happening right in front of

me? [Are these] Nassim's words? Kim's words? At what point does this become a performance

and at what point does this stop being a script. It is very new to divide a piece like that in my

head" (WRRR Interview). Another participant said that they felt the "role of the audience is to

interpret moments where the actor and the text don't blend one hundred percent together. [The]

role of the audience is to observe those moments where [the actor is] just reading off the page

for the first time . . . those moments where the actor has to take a second to think about what was

just said," (WRRR Interview) suggesting that the drawing of attention to such blends is integral


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to the performance, if not the "role" or purpose of the spectators. The script itself even demands

attention be paid to this apparently unsuccessful blend, asking explicitly, "Who IS this actor? Is

this actor herself? Is she someone else? Is she acting a role? Is she now a young writer from

Iran?" (White Rabbit42) and describing the performance as "Words from me, performance from

her," (White Rabbit5) in a line that is spoken by the actor, but also refers to the actor, combining

self-reference and third person perspective.

In addition to the oscillation of the actor as both performer and audience member, the

audience too finds themselves in various theatrical roles. The audience is thoroughly involved

throughout the performance, numbering themselves off in the beginning of the play - giving each

an individual sense of identification - then joining the actor onstage in skits. The audience role

too, then, becomes conflated with that of the actor as they help to bring the script to life and take

on characters. Further, interviews conducted with audience members specifically referred to a

feeling of being an "active participant." Subjects said: "it was theatrical in that as soon as you

came in it was about creation. You had a number and became an active participant in creating a

performance" (WRRR Interview). Phrases about the demand of attention, feeling of a group

contract, mandate of compliance, and use of the audience as "tools or toys" were prevalent in

interviews, with one subject stating, "You're actually being recognized... that's kind of a scary

concept (WRRR Interview). Other subjects also spoke of the necessity of such participation in

order to complete the performance: "[it] asks a lot of you as an audience member. It's not a play

where you can just fade into the background and just watch someone else do something. It's kind

of like a discussion." In fact, parallels to the show as an "experiment" were also voiced wherein

the "audience is all rabbits... [they're] a part of the study" (WRRR Interview). This idea was

reinforced by the script itself, which accuses the audience: "[I]f you're an audience member

who's PARTICIPATED, if you're number 3 or 5, 6 or 9 or if you paid for the rabbit's ticket, even


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if you are taking notes right now at this very moment... MAY GOD SAVE YOU! -- Because

YOU are a red rabbit" (White Rabbit 22). This suggests that the role of the audience has been

blended with that of the rabbit performers onstage, such that the two become interchangeable.

When asked to describe the role or function of the audience, the descriptions were also highly

active: "[The audience] makes the play. They have the power and they don't know it. They can

choose to send them to the executioner (WRRR Interview). This description of a strong sense

of active agency on the part of the audience as they occasionally take to the stage and perform as

actors themselves further reinforces a kind of unstable blending of theatrical role; it is not

immediately clear who the character is and again the usual blend of actor body and fictional text

is disrupted. In fact, as an example, the transformation of a "real-world" audience member into a

rabbit character for the purpose of the show is drawn-out, pulling attention to the usually

unconscious process of conceptual blending. The audience is asked to produce a "red hat" for the

rabbit and time is spent transforming the audience member by putting some sort of jacket, hat,

scarf or other object, depending on the night, on the audience member's head. Thus instead of

quickly and easily allowing for a blend between input one of the reality of an audience member

and input two of the fictional rabbit, the attention of the audience is directed onto this blending

process as they assist with the transformation. Thus, again, highly self-evident blending takes the

place of what is usually an unconscious process.

In addition to this conflation of theatrical roles, the distinction between what is real and

what is fictional is also blurred.One of the first things the actor is instructed by the script to do is

bring up an audience member on stage to empty a vial of poison into one of two water glasses

onstage. Later, the actor is told to drink one of the two glasses, with the implicated potential

being that of suicide. The poison is actually caster sugar, which dissolves easily into the water,

but within the fiction of the abstract play world, the implication is that it is real poison. This


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blend within the theatrical frame seems indicative of Seana Coulson's examination of the effect

of a privative frame on language in semantics. Her example centers on the terms gun versus

fake gun, wherein the adjective fake determines that no fake gun is a gun (or, in other words,

wherein A represents a adjective and N represents a noun, the privative means that no AN is a

N). She explains that, "speakers treat 'fake' as a space builder that prompts a mapping between

an actual scenario in which the actor employs the fake gun. . . The object in the blended space

inherits the property of being plastic from the space that represents the actor's knowledge.

Moreover, it inherits the property of being a gun from the victim's belief stance" (Coulson). This

seems to parallel the spectators' usual use of the theatrical frame as a space builder that prompts

a mapping between the actual-world fake poison and the performance onstage in which the

poison is real. It assures viewers that everything is not real; we know the poison is not real

because it exists on stage, within a theatre. Interestingly enough, the script actually refers to the

play itself as a gun, further supporting a connection of the piece to Coulson's article and the idea

of a safety frame (White Rabbit 24). Rather than allow for a clear distinction between input one

of the reality of the poison as caster sugar, input two wherein the script calls for real poison, and

the resultant blend and suspension of disbelief to allow for "real" poison in the storyworld,

however, White Rabbit Red Rabbit destabilizes the delineation between the two inputs, and

suggests that elements of the fictional world (namely, the presence of real poison), may have

bled into the real world. The script draws attention to the fact that the audience has automatically

used a space builder to reassure themselves that there is in fact no danger to the actor onstage by

self-referentially indicating this automatic complicity, such as in the line, "Was that powder salt

or sugar, or was it RAT POISON? This is a theatre, so it's VERY probably FAKE. . . right?...But

what really matters is POSSIBILITY. What MATTERS is NOT KNOWING," (White Rabbit

25). The blended space, however, becomes destabilized as the audience begins to wonder if


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indeed there is in fact the possibility of real poison in the real world: "You may think there is no

poison, no POSSIBILITY of poison. But dear actor! Your mind might lie to you" (White Rabbit

35). Participants interviewed afterwards echoed this idea saying, "I'm sure all of us are relatively

sure there wasn't poison. . . [but we] couldn't help but wonder" (WRRR Interview). Even I, as

one of the organizers, had moments of doubt, particularly when my co-organizer whom I was

sitting beside during a performance slid a note over that said, "it really could be, you know. We

haven't been watching it for the past few hours, anyone could have snuck in." Rather than being

able to combine the reality of the physical object and the fictional identity of the object in the

story world, the audience seems unable to clearly delineate between the two. Attention instead is

in fact drawn to the oscillation of the poison as having a "possibility" of being really poisonous,

suggesting again a sort of incomplete or unstable blend.


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5. CONCLUSION

By consistently conflating the roles of the audience and actor, and self-referentially

questioning the safety of theatrical frame, conceptual blending theory is not only activated in

audience members but the blend actually draws attention to itself and is lingered upon, rather

than being "for the most part [a] routine, workaday process that escapes detection except on

technical analysis" (Turner 11). Why make the blend so noticeable? First, it encourages

audiences to become aware that the blend is happening: forcing realization and metacognition on

a typically subconscious activity. In this way, perhaps White Rabbit Red Rabbit almost

surreptitiously makes audiences realize the automaticity of passive processing. Just as earlier

theorists like Bennett and de Marinis posit the importance of an active spectatorship in order to

"complete" the theatrical piece, White Rabbit Red Rabbit in both its content and form challenges

audiences to work in a cognitively active way to combat passive complicity and obedience.

Then, as the subject matter of compliance, obedience, conformity, and passivity are highlighted

throughout the script, it asks, "What do you think of that? Did you do all I asked? What are your

limits of OBEDIENCE? How often will CONFORMITY control your thoughts, my rabbits?"

(White Rabbit 23) Themes are not simply discussed or presented onstage, but microcosmically

lived out by the audience members as they observe the performance, experience the guilt of

inactivity, and struggle to complete the usually less tenuous blending of actor and text to

character, and real-life object to object in playworld.

Interviewees afterwardmade connections between the necessary activity of the spectator

and the guilt of passivity, saying that the audience role is "to be there, or else the duality of 'is

this real is this fake, is she going to die is, she not going to die' principle couldn't happen without

us being there. You are a sinner if you are a passive witness to this person's suicide" (WRRR

Interview). Further, the role was variously described as being a guilty party, passive


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bystander, and witness who if they remain inactive must accept blame: all emphasizing a

reflection of the content lived out and the necessity of active spectatorship. One audience

member simply reflected saying, "I didn't do anything. I didn't think to do anything and I don't

know why... maybe this shouldn't be happening but I let it play out just to see" (WRRR

Interview). Rather than easily slip into a willing suspension of disbelief within the "safety" net

of the theatrical frame which reassures us that everything onstage is fake, White Rabbit Red

Rabbit does not allow for such simple conceptual blending and rather confuses the delineation

between inputs one and two and forces a constant unstable oscillation between the two,

compelling audience members to become conscious of their willingness to blend: this is "a story

about other people not doing anything. About aggression and how others stand-by or hurt this

rabbit. [It] make[s] us feel responsible for our inaction by not acting, (WRRR Interview). This

statement is applicable to the apparent inaction of automatic conceptual blending, and the need

to be cognitively, and by extension, physically active. This synthesis of form and content

encourages active participation on the part of the audience in such a way that it even appears to

extend into real-world behaviors. One audience member actually said, "I'm going to go out and

read about this and find the instructions, the real instructions." A comment that speaks to a very

physical, continued, real-world activation. Poignantly, a spectator wondered, "Why can't we . . .

why don't we all help?" (WRRR Interview).

Moving forward, questions still exist concerning the actual process of the blend. As

Coulson suggests, Rather than the algorithmic combination of discrete concepts (monotonic

and nonmonotonic combinations alike), our observations point to the importance of the human

ability to accommodate frames at various levels of abstraction to suit varying contextual

conditions (Coulson). Rather, "The projection to this blend and the completion and elaboration

of the blend are not algorithmic, not predictable from the inputs, but instead have considerable


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Jacobson 22

room for alternatives" (Turner 12). What happens to those aspects of the inputs and generic

space that are not projected? What kind of effect do these leftover pieces of information have

on the blending process, if any?

Additionally, this concept of an active performance continues to incite further

exploration. Task-based performance is a very new area of study in which a performance

attempts to do something, with focus on the technique or accomplishment. For instance,

speaking perfectly timed to a pre-recorded dialogue (Little Iliad), engaging in a game of table

tennis (Winners and Losers), or cooking a full meal onstage (Getting Even). What effect does

the realness and relatively uncontrollable nature of such instances have in common with White

Rabbit Red Rabbit and the unpredictability of the actors' actions? How does this encourage a

similarly active audience, and what effect does it have upon spectators and their cognitive

processing?

There are still many venues to explore with regard to cognitive science and theatre

audiences, and as theories become increasingly complex and multiply in nature, the importance

of analyzing theatrical events through the lens of cognitive processing will likely continue to be

extremely fruitful for directors, educators, and theatre practitioners alike, who all desire to have

some sort of effect upon their audiences: an effect, that, if able to be carefully attuned to exactly

the needs of the production, may prove very powerful.


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Works Cited

Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences.New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Blair, Rhonda. "Cognitive Neuroscience and Acting: Imagination, Conceptual Blending, and

Empathy". The Drama Review53.4 (2009): 92-103. Print.

Cook, Amy. "Interplay: The Method and Potential of a Cognitive Scientific Approach to

Theatre". Theatre Journal59 (2007): 579594. Print.

Coulson, S. & Fauconnier, G. "Fake Guns and Stone Lions: Conceptual Blending and

Privative Adjectives". Cognition and Function in Language. Eds. B. Fox, D.

Jurafsky, & L. Michaelis. Palo Alto: CSLI, 1999. Pdf.

Fauconnier, Giles and Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's

Hidden Complexities.New York: Basic Books, 2002. Pdf.

Fitzgerald, Christina M., and John T. Sebastian. The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama.

Broadview Press, 2012. Pdf.

Getting Even. By Jim Garrad. Dir. Patrick Downes. 256 Victoria, Kingston, ON. 6 April 2013.

Performance.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson.Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2003. Print.

Little Illiad. By Evan Webber. Dir. Frank Cox-OConnell. The Baby Grand Theatre, Kingston,

ON. 21 March 2013. Performance.

Manzoor, Sarfraz. "White Rabbit, Red Rabbit. The play that asks you to leave your phone on."

The Guardian. 21 June 2012. Online. Accessed 20 February 2013.

McConachie, Bruce and F. Elizabeth Hart, eds.Performance and Cognition Theatre

Studies and the Cognitive Turn.New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.


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McConachie, Bruce.Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the

Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Print.

Soleimanpour, Nassim. White Rabbit Red Rabbit. Volcano Theatre/Necessary

AngelTheatre/Aurora Nova Productions/Remarkable Arts. 14 August 2011 Draft. Pdf.

Turner, Mark. "The cognitive study of art, language, and literature."Poetics Today23.1 (2002):

9-20

Walker, Julia. "The Text/Performance Split Across the Analytic/Continental Divide." Staging

philosophy: intersections of theater, performance, and philosophy. Eds. Krasner, David,

and David Z. Saltz. University of Michigan Press, 2006. 36-39. Pdf.

Ward, Karen. "Polysemy, Metatheatricality, and Affective Piety: A study of Conceptual

Blending in the York Play The Crucifixion." Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval

Europe. Ed. Michael Foster. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,

2010. 127-138. Print.

Winners and Losers. By Marcus Youssef and James Long. Dir. Chris Abraham. Studio B,

Richmond, BC. 22 November 2012 - 1 December 1 2012. Performance.

WRRR Interview. Personal Interview. 26-28 September 2013.

Roles and Rabbits: Conceptual Blending of Theatrical Roles in White Rabbit Red Rabbit

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