If the brain is the theatre, consciousness is the play. But who or what controls what we watch and how we watch it? In Theatre of the Mind Jay Ingram, whose past scientific investigations include the properties of honey on toast and the complexities of the barmaid's brain, tackles one of the most controversial of subjects: consciousness. Scientists have long tried to map our brains and understand how it is that we think and are self-aware, but what do we really know? Any discussion of the brain raises more questions than answers, and Ingram illuminates some of the most perplexing ones: What happens in our minds when we're driving and we suddenly realize that we don't remember the last few miles of highway? How do we remember images, sounds, and aromas from our past so vividly, and why do we often recreate them so differently in our dreams? Ingram's latest book is a mind-bending experience, a cerebral, stylish ride through the history, philosophy, and science of the brain and the search for the discovery of the self.

For generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a “theater of the mind.” This book unpacks that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In Theater of the Mind, Neil Verma applies an array of critical methods to more than six thousand recordings to produce a vivid new account of radio drama from the Depression to the Cold War. In this sweeping exploration of dramatic conventions, Verma investigates legendary dramas by the likes of Norman Corwin, Lucille Fletcher, and Wyllis Cooper on key programs ranging from The Columbia Workshop, The Mercury Theater on the Air, and Cavalcade of America to Lights Out!, Suspense, and Dragnet to reveal how these programs promoted and evolved a series of models of the imagination. With close readings of individual sound effects and charts of broad trends among formats, Verma not only gives us a new account of the most flourishing form of genre fiction in the mid-twentieth century but also presents a powerful case for the central place of the aesthetics of sound in the history of modern experience.

Using the theatre as a central metaphor, this text provides a flexible framework to explore the psychic realities of the characters within us. Case studies underscore how different kinds of patients construct particular fantasies as a response to the pain of earlier life scenarios.

Plautus was Ancient Rome's greatest comic playwright, Shakespeare drew heavily on his plots, and his legacy is prevalent throughout modern drama. In this expanded edition of his successful book, one of America's foremost Classical scholars introduces performance criticism to the study of Plautus' ancient drama. In addition to the original detailed studies of six of the dramatists's plays, the methodology of performance criticism, the use of conventions, and the nature of comic heroism in Plautus, this edition includes new studies on: * the induction into the world of the play * the scripted imitation of improvisation * Plautus's comments on his previous work * the nature of 'tragicomedy'.

Topics like hypnosis, absorbed states of mind, adaptation to trauma, and the human propensity to project expectations on uncertainty, all fit into the expanded theater metaphor.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the fascinating and strikingly diverse history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Key questions that the book explores are: How do spectators engage with the drama in performance, and how does the historical context influence the dramaturgy of imagination? In addition to offering a study of the cultural history and theory of imagination in a European context including its philosophical, physiological, cultural and political implications, the book examines the cultural enactment of imagination in the drama text and offers practical strategies for analyzing the aesthetic practice of imagination in drama texts. It covers the early modern to the late modernist period and includes three in-depth case studies: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c.1606); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879); and Eugène Ionesco’s The Killer (1957).