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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Staging conceptual blending and other cognitive processes in the theatre of Martin Crimp

Résumé

This paper aims to look at how the process of conceptual blending is turned into a dramatic material in Martin Crimp’s play Attempts on Her Life (1997) and the three short pieces of Fewer Emergencies (2005), where "the dramatic space is a mental space, not a physical one." I use Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s work in cognitive linguistics to show how the process of creative thinking itself is dramatised in these plays, as Crimp’s theatre stages our "dramas-in-the-head" to reflect on our traumas and anxieties. Crimp's interest in exploring mental spaces in the theatre stems from his observation that "part of modern ‘identity’ is to live inside our heads (a bit like being shut in a car, endlessly driving)" and follows the work of Pinter and Beckett. In this paper I attempt to show how the processes, mechanisms and contents of the psyche are used as theatrical resources, forming poetic models that provide his plays with signifying structures, while the imaginings and fantasies of the anonymous characters raise a number of sociological, ideological, ethical, political, and philosophical questions. The creative power of language allows the voices on stage to explore and perform “what’s in our heads” through the development of a “psychopoetics” that sheds light on a world that has become more uncertain and unreliable than ever.
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Dates et versions

hal-04293359 , version 1 (18-11-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04293359 , version 1

Citer

Solange Ayache. Staging conceptual blending and other cognitive processes in the theatre of Martin Crimp. Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, Melissa Trimingham; Prof. Nicola Shaughnessy; Centre for Cognition, Kinaesthetics and Performance, Jul 2018, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04293359⟩
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