Communication in Theatre Directing and Performance: From Rehears ...

conscious realms, or even to operate at a subliminal level, much as the ‘intuitive’ performer works from a less conscious centre that functions without cognitive input yet ‘feels right’. It has certainly been shown that higher cognitive functions are not always necessary for organisms to respond to affective aspects of a stimulus (Ledoux Sakaguchi, and Reis 1984). Furthermore, neurobehavioural evidence is consistent with the view, suggested by anatomical evidence, that some emotional processing could occur independently, whereas cognitive processing might influence or elicit undercurrent emotions (Beeman, Ortony, and Monti 1995). This phenomenon is underlined by the ‘mere exposure effect’ (Zajonc 1980), in which subjects show increased positive affect towards a previously revealed stimulus, even when consciously unaware. It also concords with Bruner’s (1974) proposal that perception is not an isolated, independent system but that it rather interacts with other psychological systems. It is a product of autochthonous⁴ or stimulus determinants and also of experiential, motivational, personal, and social factors. Humans are eminently capable of reasoning, interpretation, and inference in a multitude of situational experiences. They cross-reference, using their imaginations to invent ever-new interpretations of events, and they do this partly by embracing memories that are stored, partly by creative or intuitive leaps, and partly by observation of others who are successful (Bandura 1986). Within the rehearsal situation, all of these processes will be surfacing in various degrees of intensity, for example, when performers are working intuitively or viewing external models that trigger inner affective recognition, when working from a bank of skills already acquired, or perhaps when adapting to newly learned skills emulated from one’s collaborators or negotiated with them.

People mature by acquiring skills to carry out their intentions, and cognitive development, as well as physical enhancement, is organized around this. In learning a skill, one appears to learn more than the particular solution; one learns classes of solutions (Bruner 1973). Bruner’s assertion states that ‘all perceptual experience is necessarily the end product of a categorisation process’ (8). He proposed that