Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance: From Rehearsal to Production
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Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance: From Rehears ...

Chapter 2:  Communication Overview
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to develop their own intersubjectivity and thus maximize the efficacy of their communication. The multinational community in which they work with opera singers often sees castings determined solely by vocal quality rather than an ability to communicate within a common language. As such, observational learning of social communication patterns would seem to be an important component of that process. Behaviours must be attuned socially to all those involved with the production personnel, not least of whom is the director. However, it would seem that this is true within all cultures, as Bandura and Walters (1963, 47) explained:

Although it is evident from informal observation that models are utilized in all cultures to promote the acquisition of socially sanctioned behaviour patterns, the cultural importance of observational learning is especially apparent in accounts given by anthropologists of the process of socialization in societies other than our own.

Paul Ekman, writing in New Scientist (2004, 4–5), stated that the research of Charles Darwin shows he had no difficulty in understanding the facial expressions of the various cultures he met on his travels, perhaps underlining the argument that facial expressions are universal. To research this, Ekman travelled in 1967 to a preliterate tribe in New Guinea that had had no opportunities to learn facial expressions from the West.

The results were overwhelming: the majority of their judgements were exactly what we would have predicted had they been from any other culture. It didn’t matter whether the participants were male or female, adults or five-year-old children, or whether or not they had previously seen outsiders.

Facial expressions and body language communicate at a depth beyond words and universally amongst humans (Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen 1983). This standpoint emerged from many years of research amongst visually isolated cultures (e.g., Ekman and Friesen 1971, who worked with the South Fore of New Guinea) in crosscultural studies that strongly supported universality. However, some maintain that this universalist