Improvisation Practices and Dramaturgical Consciousness: A Workshop

Midgelow, Vida L.

doi:10.1057/9781137373229_6

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…These findings confirm and deepen our understanding of the benefits of conscious analysis, strategic reflection, and problemsolving in the context of improvisation practices (Hansen and House, 2015;Hansen and Oxoby, 2017). The results furthermore support the critique of an over-emphasis on presence in classical improvisation approaches, voiced by contemporary improvisors and PGS creators (Drinko, 2013;Sarco-Thomas, 2014;Midgelow, 2015;Hansen, 2018). Without the PGS-specific tasks and rules that restrict responses, performers would have the option of staying within their comfort zones and repeating responses already arrived at.…”

Section: Qualitative Resultssupporting

confidence: 76%

“…In other words, performers likely rely on rather than inhibit prepotent (automatic) responses, while avoiding conscious thought processes associated with problem-solving and deliberate set-shifting. New and less commonly used approaches to improvisation are challenging this exclusive focus on the present by articulating the layers of memory and cultural training that inform improvised impulses while performing (Drinko, 2013;Sarco-Thomas, 2014;Midgelow, 2015;Hansen, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Demands of Performance Generating Systems on Executive Functions: Effects and Mediating Processes

2020

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Performance generating systems (PGS) are rule-and task-based approaches to improvisation on stage in theater, dance, and music. These systems require performers to draw on predefined source materials (texts, scores, memories) while working on complex tasks within limiting rules. An interdisciplinary research team at a large Western Canadian University hypothesized that learning to sustain this praxis over the duration of a performance places high demands on executive functions; demands that may improve the performers' executive abilities. These performers need to continuously shift attention while remaining responsive to embodied and environmental stimuli in the present, they are required to inhibit automated responses and impulses using the rules of the system, and they strive toward addressing multitasking challenges with fluidity and flexibility. This study set out to test the mentioned hypothesis deductively and identify mediating processes inductively, using mixed empirical methods. In a small sample experiment with a control group (28 participants; 15 in intervention group, 13 in control group), standardized quantitative tests of executive functions (D-KEFS) were administered before and after an 8-week intervention. Participantreported qualitative observations from the praxis were also collected throughout the intervention for grounded analysis. Within the limitations of small sample data, we found both statistically significant and trending effects on inhibition, problem-solving initiation, fluidity, and cognitive flexibility. Examining the mediating process, we found that participants experienced significant challenges sustaining the practice halfway through the intervention. The participant-reported solutions to these challenges, which emerged as the strongest behavioral patterns when coding the qualitative data to saturation, were strategies of problem-solving and of redirecting attention. These strategies support and advance our understanding of the effects measured in the standardized tests. In terms of application, our results identify characteristics of PGS that could potentially maintain and strengthen executive functions over and above less demanding performing arts interventions. The results also deliver new insight into how PGS works, which may contribute to the development and teaching of this artistic practice.

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Section: Qualitative Resultssupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demands of Performance Generating Systems on Executive Functions: Effects and Mediating Processes

2020

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“…She argues that, 'In body memory the emphasis is less upon an act of recollection from the present back to the past and more upon an ongoing re-enactment of the past within the course of the body's performance'. 44 She discusses the improviser's source material, their body memory, as 'habits in the body', 45 but they are not clichéd movement as the dancer brings them to consciousness and crafts them in response to the here and now. Sheets-Johnstone finds the possibility of daily life consciously entering the improvised dance but she is careful to explain that such inclusions are not making the dance about something (not a mimetic endeavour).…”

Section: Practicementioning

confidence: 99%