Chapter 9

Ritual, Arousal, Reward, Ecstasy

Introduction: From High Mass to Ecstasy

I grew up in a little town outside of Detroit, Michigan, called Chesterfield Township. When I was six years old, St. Louis parish opened its new church in neighboring Mount Clemens, and I followed my brothers to the parochial grade school there having no idea what to expect as I entered first grade. Perhaps anxious to make the most out of its beautiful new church, our school year started out with a High Mass in Latin. If it was their intention to clearly impress upon me that I was an insignificant pea in the face of the Almighty, they succeeded. Really succeeded. I can still remember my overwhelmed reaction to what seemed like the enormous sanctuary and nave, dimly lit, smoky and full of the sweet smell of incense. There were priests in colorful garments and students all organized in the pews according to grade. As peons go, I was first class. But most of all I remember the music. Over a thousand students sang the Catholic liturgy in Latin, with the most experienced up in the organ loft singing harmonies into the massively reverberant hall. High Mass was still in Latin in 1959, so I had no idea what they were all singing about. But I can still conjure up my overwhelming feelings of awe, reverence and wonder, the music carrying my soul to the heavens. I was pretty sure that I had come to God’s house and God was right there watching me, and, hopefully, protecting me. The High Mass embodied ritual at its finest.

Sir James Frazer may have been the first person to suggest in his 1890 book, The Golden Bough, that the origins of theatre lay in the religious rituals of primitive humans (Frazer 1922). In the years that followed, that concept became widely accepted. The famous School of Cambridge, led by Jane Harrison, embraced the idea, and Harrison herself proposed a critical clarification of the theory, that theatre evolved out of primitive ritual dance (1951, 42). Remember that dance and music were inseparable in primitive cultures, and our definition considers dance to be a visual form of music. Looking back at one of the earliest experiences in my life, it is not hard for me to understand the extraordinary influence that that music, manifested in ritual, could have on a person’s connection to the unknown.

But how did we humans get from the fairly simply organized rituals of our ape ancestors to the elaborate myths, stories and dramatic enactments of our human ancestors? Enactments that most agree led to the first fully autonomous Western theatre in ancient Greece? Prominent theatre theorist Richard Schechner traces modern theatre to ritual and shamanism:

He continues, quoting Andreas Lommel: “Shamanism is ‘a method, a psychic technique’ of which the ‘fundamental characteristic … is ecstasy, interpreted as the soul forsaking the body’” (1988, 40–41). I wouldn’t quite describe my Catholic Church experience as ecstasy, but I can certainly sense its origins in such a practice. I can also recall numerous music and theatre experiences I’ve had that I would describe as having delivered me into ecstasy.

In this chapter, we will pick up our story where we left off in Chapter 8, about 30,000 years ago. The period is called the “Upper Paleolithic Period,” or the later stages of the stone age, a time when we still made our tools from stone. This is a period of tremendous explosion in human advancement, most notable for the clear, unique, and unambiguous development of human consciousness. In the earlier chapters of this book, we described the energy and temporal characteristics of sound. We considered startle and habituation in terms of mass/dynamics, and entrainment in terms of rhythm. We saw how animal brains evolved to process sounds and use them to communicate or express emotions. In the last couple of chapters, we witnessed the earliest primates who consciously manipulated acoustic energy in time, starting with primitive drumming. Later humans expanded their musical abilities, exploring consonance and dissonance through melodic lines made possible by the invention of primitive bone flutes. As we continue our journey, we’ll see how humans started using these elements to create primitive music that manipulated the conscious states of others. We create proto-theatre activities in ritual by adding mimesis to this music, leading to our very simple formula, theatre = song + mimesis. To understand how ritual works, we will look deep inside human physiological and psychological systems. We’ll discover how music affects our mood, grabs our attention, and rewards us—especially in the context of ritual and theatre. We’ll conclude the chapter by exploring some of the ways that I have come to understand these things, and have worked to incorporate them into my own personal aesthetic.

The Development of Ritual, Shamanism, and Altered States of Consciousness

Thirty thousand years ago, our Homo sapiens sapiens ancestors were expanding their musical chops and developing much more sophisticated social systems. These social systems inevitably led to sophisticated belief systems, including their expression through ritual. Matt Rossano, an evolutionary psychologist from Southeastern Louisiana University, proposed four stages in the development of primitive animal ritual into humanity’s first fully formed religions. He argues that these four stages provide evidence of ever-expanding human cognitive abilities (Rossano 2007). The first stage includes the animal rituals we explored in Chapter 5: those of elk, deer, moose, gelados, baboons, chimpanzees and bonobos. Rossano follows Merlin Donald, identifying the second stage as the emergence of mimetic capabilities in Homo erectus. He suggests that Homo erectus “took control of their rituals, and increasingly directed them toward the deliberate manipulation of conscious experience” (2007, 95–96). In Rossano’s third stage that flourished during the Upper Paleolithic, humanity’s first religion emerged: shamanism. We’ll investigate shamanism in this chapter. In the fourth stage, which we’ll save for the next chapter, shamanism develops a much more sophisticated capacity for human narrative due to advances in memory: our ability to store and recall information. Human ability to pass narratives from generation to generation allowed the creation and preservation of religious myths and associated stories.

Keep in mind that there is, as always, controversy surrounding the evidence available in prehistoric times. Prehistory, by its very nature, does not provide us with much direct evidence, because it is after all, prehistory. Evolutionary biology, anthropology and archaeology tend to supply us with what limited evidence there is. The rest must be inferred and induced by studying similarities in our living Homo sapiens populations who appear to have changed the least. We are sometimes left to compare existing primitive tribes that have not undergone the same technological advancement as most of human civilization, comparing their traits and behaviors to the imagined ones of our ancestors. But remember, that we can now also analyze our own neurological systems because they are fundamentally the same as our Homo sapiens sapiens ancestors. Still, the lack of physical evidence is highly likely to make any conclusions we draw controversial and legitimately suspect. I wouldn’t do it, however, if I hadn’t found deep resonance in my own art and in decades of teaching and learning. Keep those caveats in mind as we move forward.

In the Upper Paleolithic, we find an abundance of evidence of expanding human cognitive abilities in cave art that suddenly appeared all over the inhabited world from Asia to Africa to Europe.

Anthropologist Michael Winkelman also finds clear evidence in the cave art for the emergence of shamanism in the Upper Paleolithic. He, like Rossano, traces its origins back to the rituals of our hominid ancestors. Winkleman particularly notes the fundamental role of “chanting, music, and group ritual activities based in mimetic capabilities” (Winkelman 2002, 78). Winkelman provides important support for the powerful combination of song and mimesis in proto-theatre activities.

While the term “shaman” derives from an ancient Siberian term and practice, there are elements of the practice that are common to many primitive cultures, indicating ancient origins. Rossano cites a commonly used definition that describes shamanism in terms of practices appearing across many cultures: a religion indicating “the attainment of altered states of consciousness for the purpose of interacting with the spirit world for the benefit of one’s community…. in its incipient form, the adaptive benefit of shamanism would have been healing” (2007, 102). Winkelman proposes that similarities in shamanic practice across the globe “are a consequence of independent inventions, or derivations, from a common neuropsychology.” Similarities include “visionary experience, soul journey, guardian spirit quest, healing practices, and self-transformation experiences such as death and rebirth” (Winkelman 2002, 72). Theatre theorist E.T. Kirby distinguished shamanistic ritual from other rituals such as “rites of passage” because shamanism depended on “the immediate and direct manifestation to the audience of supernatural presence, rather than its symbolization” (1975, 2). Shamanism meant becoming the supernatural presence, not simply imitating it. In other words, mimesis.

According to Winkelman, “The shamanistic ritual was typically an all-night ceremony attended by the entire community” (2002, 72). But there were also private and individual rituals that appeared to take place deep in the recesses of caves.

Many cave paintings have been found as far as a half-mile deep inside the caves. Now, if I were living in a cave, I wouldn’t take up residence a half-mile deep in a cave! I’d stick close to the entrance where I could guard it, and get out quick if necessary. So, it seems quite likely to me and many others that these paintings deep within the caves indicate another type of ritual, more individual in nature.

The handprints of children found on the walls of many caves across differing time periods and geographical locations all suggest coming-of-age ritual activities.

The cave art suggesting shamanism appeared at the height of the stone age at a time when primitive cultures developed an anthropomorphic worldview.

During the stone age, our human ancestors developed not just social knowledge about the mental states of others as our ape ancestors did, but conceptions of the unknowable—gods and spirits and non-human entities, especially animals. They imagined these entities to have human characteristics, and then inferred what those entities must have been thinking (Winkelman 2002, 75). This belief that every living thing and inanimate object was created or inhabited by a unique spirit that had human characteristics is called anthropomorphism.

Russian archaeologist Ekaterina Devlet adds:

Such a worldview was based on the anthropomorphic belief that every living thing and inanimate object was created or inhabited by a unique spirit that had human characteristics.

The combination of sound and mimesis held a very special place in this belief system. Marius Schneider detailed how primitive cultures placed a special value on sound in their anthropomorphic worldview. When a person successfully imitated the sound made by an animal or object, tribes believed that the actual animal or object’s spirit inhabited that person. For primitive humans, sound was by far the most effective means of imitation. Primitive peoples can imitate the world around them with uncanny accuracy—and are even known to hold “nature concerts” in which each singer imitates a particular sound—wind, waves, animals and so forth. Masks, dance and other ornaments are not nearly as effective in primitive mimesis. For this reason, sound was considered to have a special connection to the spirit world; sound was indestructible, and carried the soul of the individual away upon death. Other humans could bring back the spirit of the deceased human, animal and so forth through imitation of the sound of that person, animal or object. Sound had a special connection to the spirit world that no other element possessed (Schneider 1955, 8–12).

Sound and music were arguably the most important tools used to immerse the shaman and community into altered states of consciousness. To understand an altered state of consciousness, one must first understand consciousness, and then develop an understanding of where an altered state of consciousness fits in the consciousness “continuum.” Rossano considers consciousness in terms of an individual’s overall level of awareness or arousal. Dreaming can involve consciousness just as much as waking does. Rossano describes one model of consciousness as a continuum “moving from wakeful, externally-directed, task-oriented consciousness to autistic, internally-directed, dreaming consciousness.” This continuum might move as follows:

• waking externally directed problem solving →
• waking realistic fantasy, internally directed abstract problem solving →
• daydreaming without the constrictions of reality →
• hypnagogic¹ (states with vivid images and sounds teetering on sleep →
• dreaming.

(Rossano, 2007, 91–92)

David Lewis-Williams is a South African scholar who also specializes in shamanism, and, in general, follows the same line of reasoning as Rossano and Winkelman. He describes the placement of altered states of consciousness in the continuum in this way:

Altered states of consciousness—to which theatre shares a close relationship—lie somewhere between dreams and our shared perceptions, which we often refer to as “reality.”² Winkelman noted the fundamental similarity between the neurophysiological and cognitive functions of dreaming and shamanic altered states of consciousness. He suggested that shamanic altered states of consciousness were typically induced during nighttime rituals specifically to incorporate dream episodes. Rossano suggests that “the experience (of consciously induced altered states) share similarities with those of dreams, but are often more compelling and ‘real’ for the person involved” (Rossano 2007, 92). In the very roots of theatre, we see a close connection between shamanic ritual that involves entering into an altered state of consciousness, and dreaming.

Shamans used a variety of methods to enter altered states of consciousness (Winkelman 2002, 72). These could include sensory deprivation, like crawling through freezing waters a mile deep into a cave (!), but also simply closing the eyes and focusing on a mantra. Other methods include stressful or painful trials such as rites of initiation or isolation, fasting, and even ingestion of psychotropic substances (Rossano 2007, 93). But there is one thing that it appears that all shamanic rituals could not do without: music.

There is a tremendous amount of controversy and perhaps even conflicting explanations for the artifacts left behind by our stone age ancestors. But I have never encountered a single researcher who has suggested that music did not play a central role in the rituals of our human ancestors. Winkelman puts it very succinctly: “Music, singing and chanting are universal features of shamanic practice” (2002, 78). He describes a time in which shamans encountered the spirit world through song and dance. He notes, as many others have, the discovery of musical instruments including percussion instruments and bird flutes in cave sights and foot prints indicative of dancing (2002, 76). One of the first authorities on the origins of musical instruments, Curt Sachs, argued that the first musical instruments were created as an extension of the human need for rhythmic movement, dance:

The rock art of Siberian shamans consists of numerous images of shamans with drums, leading Ekaterina Devlet to suggest that “the drum may be seen in Siberia as one of the essential shamanic attributes, of crucial assistance in attaining an altered state of consciousness.” She goes on to describe how shamans used drums as a “mode of transportation for visits to other spheres of the universe,” consistent with the anthropomorphic view of early human cultures (Devlet 2001).

The shamanic rituals closely tied music and dance as we observed in Daniel Levitin’s assertion in Chapter 4: “One striking find is that in every society of which we’re aware, music and dance are inseparable” (2007, 247). Music and dance seem to be a natural evolutionary development of rhythmic entrainment that emerged in our bipedal ancestors, as we explored in Chapter 6. Wallin and others argue that “musical expression tends to be inextricably linked to movement and gesture in the context of most group rituals. In musical rituals, gesture and vocalizing function as coordinated, mutually reinforcing processes at both the individual and group levels” (Wallin, Merker and Brown 1999, 9–10). It seems like it would be hard to argue convincingly that music and mimesis were not universally a part of the shaman’s ritual journey into altered states of consciousness.

E.T. Kirby’s examples of the influence of music on the shamans and their audiences are prevalent throughout his book, Ur-Drama. He considers extant tribes that presumably have not changed much over thousands of years, finding evidence in the primitive cultures from Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Oceana that trace back to 13,000 to 6,000 bce. He provides a list of components of the shamanic ritual and their effect: “Dialogue, enactments, ventriloquism, incantations, music, dance, and song create a swirling stream of images drawn from a number of performance modes. The effect is literally hypnotic and hallucinatory” (1975, 1–5). Note the almost seamless connection between the music of the performer and the other musical sounds that accompany the performance. The components that Kirby describes in this instance are all temporally based and predominantly auditory and musical.

In the following recount of a passage by A. F. Anisimov, Kirby describes a typical example of a shaman ritual fundamentally driven by music. Just note how much musicality is discussed in this passage (I have italicized the musical references for emphasis):

Feeling themselves participants in the shaman’s performance. Not spectators, but participants. This is theatre, the experience of being there. Arguably not Broadway, not Shakespeare, perhaps not even must-see television, although I do think I might subscribe to that channel. At the end of the day, all one really needs for theatre is song—the combination of idea and music—and mimesis, the rehearsed imitation of the story transformed into immersive experience. Together, these two elements, song and mimesis, transport us—and our human ancestors—in ways that no other experience outside of music can.

Theatre = Song + Mimesis

The impact of the development of such a potent consciousness altering medium should not be underestimated. Indeed, Winkelman argues that

Theatre changed lives then, just as it does now. And music is a fundamental source that helps transport human consciousness to theatre’s own worlds, to theatre’s own special altered states of consciousness.

The Neuroscience of Arousal and Reward in the Altered States of Consciousness of Shamanism and Theatre

Introduction: Dreams, Altered States of Consciousness and Theatre

Dreams, altered states of consciousness and theatre all transport our minds to other worlds. In these worlds, we leave behind the physical reality of our bed, our cave, or our theatre, and imagine ourselves immersed in another realm, often times with ourselves the main character driving the action. What is the process by which this happens? Of course, it is quite complex, but let’s try to explore some of its qualities in this and the next chapter. We’ll start with the most basic cognitive responses necessary to the process: we first must become aroused, interested, engaged in the other world. Then, we must somehow synchronize our physiological responses appropriately to that world while immersing ourselves in the world of our imagination. If this happens successfully, we are transported out of our waking world and into the world of the dream, the spirit world, or the play. If this happens successfully, there is also a reward for us that will keep us coming back for more. In this section, we’ll explore the processes by which we enter the altered states of dreams, rituals and theatre.

What does the shaman do that immerses the audience so completely in an altered state of consciousness that E.T. Kirby describes? We suggested that it was really quite simple: the shaman combined song (music and idea) with mimesis. Neurologically, I jokingly suggest that the formula becomes “altered states of consciousness = entrainment + mirror neurons,” but just to jump-start already heated controversies. A better place to start is to remind ourselves about the similarities between the immersive experience of theatre and the nature of dreaming. In Chapter 3 we discussed the remarkable similarity that others have found between dreams and theatre.

In dreams, areas of our thinking brain, the frontal lobe (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, see Figure 8.11) responsible for guiding thought, action and emotion become almost inactive, and our limbic system (see Figure 5.9) runs wild, generating its own stories on its own time. Inasmuch as an altered state of consciousness lies closer in the consciousness continuum toward the dreaming end, we might expect similar neurological processes. However, instead of allowing the limbic system to generate all of its stories on its own, in theatre we input the basic framework of the stories through our sensory inputs, in our case, especially our ears. It would seem that the more we can input sensory information without overactivating the areas of the brain responsible for guiding thought, action and emotion, the more likely we will be to immerse our audience in the world of the play.

According to the neurologist, Jeffrey Avner, the first step in entering an altered state of consciousness is the reduction of self-awareness and reduced awareness of one’s environment (Avner 2006, 331). In both altered states of consciousness and theatre, then, our job as composers and sound designers is not to reduce activation of the prefrontal cortex, but to take it over with our sensory input, to take the audience’s minds out of the physical world of the theatre or the cave and focus them on the stories of the characters. The more we are able to do that, the more we are able to transport our audiences into the spirit worlds of the shaman or the imaginary worlds of the playwright. Visual support—scenery, costumes, and lights—can help quite a bit, but we must remember that in our earliest incarnations of theatre, the visual element was often removed or minimized (i.e., the darkness of the cave) and the focus was on the song and mimesis of the shaman. The staging was but a medium to our imagination.

And so, a primary difference between dreams, some forms of altered states of consciousness, and theatre, is that sleep creates the appropriate conditions for the perception of other worlds in dreams, whereas the shaman and the playmakers must create the appropriate conditions for altered states of consciousness and theatre. But how does one go about doing that? We start to do this by manipulating our audience’s state of arousal.

The Basic Neuroscience of Arousal

Researchers used to think that the human brain operated on the basis of simple stimulus-response interactions. Neuroscientist Michael Thaut suggests the more current thinking that the “human brain is an arousal-seeking system” (2005, 23). According to Thaut, “‘Arousal’ is a term referring to multiple processes in the nervous system relating states of heightened physiological activity” such as an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, hormone activity, muscle activation, or brain activities. Closely associated with arousal is activation, which refers to “behavior states associated with physiological arousal states” (2005, 20). To put things simply, we go to theatre and we listen to music to become aroused. I remember a conversation I had with Broadway producer Michael Jenkins when we were discussing how we assessed the way a theatre production was affecting the audience. We both agreed that we didn’t watch the play. Instead, we watched the audience, because when you watch the audience, you can immediately tell their various states of arousal, from edge of their seat to fallen off to sleep. When our audience is aroused, we know that they are focused on the world of the play. They may even imagine themselves existing in that world, much the same way we become immersed in the world of our dreams.

As Thaut states, when we become aroused, we experience increased activity in a number of different systems. It all starts with the synapses between the neurons in our nervous system that contain chemical substances known as neurotransmitters. These chemicals transmit nerve pulses across the synapses between neurons (Thayer 1996, 91). One important system for us, the autonomic nervous system, predominantly uses the cholinergic⁵ neurotransmitter acetylcholine.⁶ The autonomic nervous system is the involuntary system (meaning we don’t typically consciously control it) that controls physiological responses such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and most of the body’s internal organs. There are two branches in the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, which predominates during emergency conditions, and is often described as the “fight or flight” system, and its opposite, the parasympathetic nervous system, which dominates during quiet, resting conditions (McCorry 2006, 3).

Another important chemical system is called the aminergic⁷ system. It involves neurotransmitters that include norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters have many functions in the body, so we’ll just concentrate on some of the ones important to this discussion. Norepinephrine and dopamine are similar in function; both are associated with activated states of arousal. Exercise and tension (stress) release norepinephrine in the brain and other parts of the body. The dopamine neurotransmitter is directly connected to rewards in the brain, and its release in particular parts of the brain may be responsible for many positive and pleasurable emotional states. Serotonin is another neurotransmitter that regulates mood. Increases of serotonin contribute to a positive mood. Serotonin activity does not change during tension like norepinephrine and dopamine do, so it is possible to remain in an elevated mood even when we are tense, a phenomenon we take great advantage of in theatre (Thayer 1996, 91–94).

The Effect of Music on Physiological Systems

As you will hopefully have suspected, music directly affects both cholinergic (autonomic nervous) and aminergic (norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin) systems. As a matter of fact, there have been numerous studies in recent years to try to more specifically determine how music works to do that. Let’s examine a few for each system.

It is clear now that music has pronounced effects on the autonomic nervous system that manifest themselves in changes to physiological systems such as heart respiratory rate. Mona Lisa Chanda and Daniel Levitin:

Ian Cross suggests that interaction between music that is “fast, loud, broad in tessitura and bright in timbre” and music that is “low, soft, narrow in tessitura and dark in timbre … is likely to lead to the elicitation of complex and compound affective states, which will in turn shape the meanings that we abstract in the processes of listening”⁸ (2010, 73).

Iwanaga and others cite many studies that have shown that sedative music, “which is characterized as melodious, delicate, harmonic, and romantic” (in this case Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1) helps to reduce anxiety and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, while “loud, dynamic, and rhythmic” music (Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring) “elicits tension and excitement,” and activates the sympathetic nervous system while decreasing parasympathetic activation (2005, 61–62). Iwanaga’s group was also able to tie specific components of heart rate variability (a measure of variations in time between heartbeats) to sedative and excitative music, although repeated exposure to excitative music decreases its effects (2005, 65). It’s important to know that we can manipulate cardiovascular response using music, but if we keep repeating the same excitative theme over and over, we’ll reduce its effects, a form of habituation. Music and theatre must have their “downs” in order to have their “ups.”

An important concept to understand, then, is that we use music to create both calm and tense, excited states. We don’t tend to think of calming music as an activation state; rather we tend to think of it as our natural “resting” state. But in actuality, it is something we have to work with an audience to attain when we want it. Each audience member comes into the theatre affected by their own very different activation state. Some may be fired up because they got into an altercation with the cab driver on the way to the theatre; others may be exhausted from a long day’s work. Our job as sound designers and composers is to take control of their activations states, and, in the process, pull them out of their world and into ours. We have to create the resting places, the low energy places in the play, just as much as the high-energy moments, not simply assume they are happening.

Ferreira and others aimed to investigate how long it took the autonomic nervous system to recover from stimuli provided by sedative (Pachelbel’s Canon) and excitative music (in this case, heavy metal, noting that techno, hip hop and heavy metal have all been shown to cause physiological arousal) (2015). Once we lull the autonomic nervous system into a particular state of activation, how long does it take before the effect wears off? In their study, Ferreira and others found an increase in parasympathetic activation 10–15 minutes after the heavy metal music stopped playing (indicating a calming influence), and the reverse effect after the Pachelbel (indicating return to a more energized state) (2015, 113). It’s interesting to note that the effects of music continue for quite some time after the music ceases, and that the body must activate the opposite system to that influenced by the music in order to bring the two systems back into balance. As theatre artists, then, we become aware when we introduce a certain style of music, that we are not just changing the moment of the music, but that the change will also have an effect in the scene that follows.

Ferreira and others also specifically tied the mechanism in cardiac autonomic responses to startle effect, in other words, to a sudden change in dynamics or mass (2015, 113). Startle effect causes a sudden rise in blood pressure and heart rate. The Ferreira group cites research that used levels of 110 dB to create startle effect, but other research suggests the threshold required may be as low as 80 dB (Ramirez-Moreno and Sewjnowski 2012, 169). My own experience suggests that the level required for startle depends greatly on the ambient level of noise in the room. For example, I have been quite startled in my bed at night when falling asleep in an extremely quiet environment when a modestly louder sound occurs, such as a creak or a tick in the house. All of this is important to us as theatre artists because it suggests that we have quite a bit of ability to modulate arousal using the dynamics of music in our productions regardless of the ideas and mimesis of the moment.

We already know about the ability of tempo in music to entrain motor movements in our audience from Chapters 5 and 6, the part where we play a tempo, and the audience unconsciously moves rhythmically to the music. Chanda and Levitin suggest that

It has been much harder to demonstrate exactly how synchronization between an external tempo and our physiological responses occurs, especially cardiovascular and respiratory systems, but it turns out that it might be worth our while to consider the possibilities.

A number of studies have found connections between physiological responses that depend on how we manipulate elements of music within relatively short time spans. In one of the earlier studies, Etzel and others found that subjects’ respiratory systems became partly entrained to tempo and suggested that because of their testing procedures, it was “likely that the subjects unconsciously matched their breathing to dominant tempos” (2006, 66). What musical elements could cause the audience to synchronize their breathing with the tempo of the music?

It turns out that how we create musical phrases has a lot to do with cardiovascular response and human respiratory rates (the amount of time it takes for us to breathe in and out). Bernardi and others discovered that our respiratory rates “mirror” the “music profile, especially during crescendos,” and that “music induces predictable physiological cardiovascular changes even in the absence of conscious reactions.” In simple terms, music affects our respiratory and cardiovascular systems regardless of whether we pay conscious attention to it or not! Bernardi’s team observed a similarity in several operas, particularly Verdi’s, that contained musical phrases of about six per minute, or one every ten seconds. It turns out that six cycles per minute is the standard frequency of cyclic changes in blood pressure in all humans called the Mayer Wave. They discovered that “specific music phrases (frequently at a rhythm of six cycles/minute in famous arias by Verdi) can synchronize inherent cardiovascular rhythms, thus modulating cardiovascular control.” This synchronization suggests the possibility that our cardiovascular system can be entrained to music, especially when we develop energy changes in long, slow, ten-second phrases (Bernardi et al. 2009, 3177).

Blood pressure tends to follow the music envelope; an increase in energy in the music tends to cause an increase in blood pressure, especially when the increase occurs over a ten-second period. Regardless of whether we are listening or not, long, slow modulations in music, especially crescendos, have a direct and unconscious effect on cardiovascular response and respiratory rate. Bernardi’s team discovered that this entrainment surprisingly occurred regardless of the emotional characteristics of the music (2009, 3178).

Laczika and others examined the so-called Mozart effect, a phenomenon in which listening to Mozart’s music increases arousal, demonstrating that music and breathing appear to be “two weakly coupled oscillators,” both in the way musicians synchronize their breathing patterns to each other, and in the way the audience synchronizes their breathing to Mozart’s music (Laczika et al. 2013). Sato and others went in the opposite direction. They created a music playback system that synchronized the playback speed (tempo) to the respiratory rate of listeners. Despite not knowing that this was happening, listeners were more aroused by the synchronized than the non-synchronized playback (Sato et al. 2013).

In another study, Watanabe and others reported that an area of the medulla (see Figure 7.11) in the brainstem⁹ responsible for regulating blood pressure responded to both musical tempo and respiratory rate. Significantly, they found that heart rate only increases when both respiratory rate and musical tempo increase, which may help to explain some discrepancies found in other studies¹⁰ (2015).

So it may turn out that we can have our cake and eat it too. One way to increase arousal may be to modulate tempo and/or phrasing around typical respiratory/cardiovascular rates. I remember my friend and collaborator Carrie Newcomer talking to our director Robin McKee when we were doing our musical, Betty’s Diner: “I tend to keep my tempos around the human heartbeat,” Carrie said. Of course, I had worked with a lot of her music, and already knew that she tended to keep them slightly faster than the resting heartbeat, not in the normal range of 70–90 bpm, but just at the upper end of that, between 90 and 100 bpm, suggesting a subtle nudge toward arousal. Electronic dance music, or EDM tempos, however, typically range in the much faster, 120–160 bpm range. Why? Because the participants are typically dancing in some form, and that sort of movement generates this type of heart rate. When I work out, I can’t help but notice the green area of recommended heart rate goes down as we get older, suggesting that we also might want to consider the age of our audience as we develop our tempo maps for our shows.

When we think about such a relationship in terms of an actor’s tempo and phrasing, this research suggests that there is a sympathetic relationship between the actor’s pacing and the playwright’s/actor’s phrasing. Could this relationship between tempo and phrasing have something to do with why sometimes the pacing seems to drag or the actors appear to be racing? Could it have something to do with why Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter? And how does the sound designer and composer work in conjunction with the actors and director to find the ideal resonance between tempo and phrasing? Interesting questions, most likely not with quantifiable answers—this is an art form after all! More likely these questions suggest an interesting relationship between phrasing, tempo and physiological response that theatre artists commonly exploit—whether they realize it or not!

All of these studies point to various types of involuntary entrainment mechanisms in our physiological systems that must have been around for millions of years—long before music since they are predominantly mediated by the ancient brainstem. It is worth noting, of course that all of these physiological responses can be modulated by “individual differences in personality and cognitive traits” (Chanda and Levitin 2013, 185). We should be more likely to choose our style of music based on what we think will arouse our audience rather than alienate them. Nevertheless, Chanda and Levitin suggest that our biological responses may be related to survival signals that have long existed in the animal kingdom: for example, the sympathetic activating alarm calls of some species versus the parasympathetic activating purring and cooing in maternal vocalizations (2013, 185–186). If our goal is to take our audience on a journey into another world, it seems like a great place to start would be inducing in our audience physiological responses appropriate for each moment in that world.

The Effect of Music on Psychological Systems

Throughout this book, we have repeatedly discussed the primary sensation of music rooted in the expression of emotion—music that incites similar emotions in others around us. In theatre, we typically do not use music to represent or present emotion. While anything is possible in theatre, almost always in my life representing or presenting emotions in theatre has been considered bad for the production.¹¹ Oliver Sacks beautifully described this phenomenon in his book Musicophilia: “Music … has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. One does not have to know anything about Dido and Aneas to be moved by her lament for him” (2007, 301). The purpose of the shamanist’s journey was not to tell his followers about ecstasy, but to bring them into a state of ecstasy. Winkelman reminds us that “at the core of hunter-gatherer shamanism is a cultural universal—entering ecstasy” (italics mine) (2002, 95). If theatre is, indeed, a type of music, then we must accept first and foremost, that music carries the mediating aspects of theatre—elements of acting, sets, lighting, costumes, and sometimes, even sound—directly into the hearts and souls and imaginations of our audiences. It needs no mediation, as Sacks wonderfully suggested.

But there is a disconnect here. Was the pain of enduring the journey a mile deep through freezing water, and being deprived of food and sensory stimuli really compensated for by the ecstasy of the altered state of consciousness? Consider this in more modern terms: if the point of listening to music and going to theatre is all about the emotional experience, then why would we ever participate in any experience that wasn’t solely a “happy” one? Have you ever thought about why people go see a play like Hamlet, or King Lear, or any of these plays that have horrible tragic endings? Why would anybody in their right mind derive pleasant satiation out of going to experience somebody’s interminable, epic, catastrophic annihilation? Even in comedies people get shot and killed. Horrible things happen in our comedies. And yet we just flock to them and pay good money to see them! Have you ever asked yourself why is that? How can that possibly be? Are we just that bankrupt spiritually and emotionally? What could possibly be so good about feeling bad?

Once again, Oliver Sacks comments on this phenomenon: “there is, finally a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time” (2007, 301). Chanda and Levitin describe the phenomenon in this way: “Even opposite emotional valences (e.g., ‘happy’ or ‘sad’) can be experienced as pleasurable and listeners often report that the most moving music evokes two or more emotions at once” (2013, 180). What’s involved in the neuroscience of the pleasure we derive from experiencing the full range of emotions in music and theatre?

In his popular book, This Is Your Brain on Music, Levitin discusses the fascinating journeys that sound takes through the nervous system and our brain when we listen to music. We’ve already discussed the fastest journey, the direct connection between our cochlea in our ear and our very ancient cerebellum, associated with startle effect and “fight or flight” reactions. In Chapter 5 we discussed the role of the basal ganglia and cerebellum (Figure 5.17) in processing rhythm after the transduced sound travels through the brainstem, midbrain and forebrain. In Chapters 7 and 8 we discussed the processing that occurs in the auditory cortex (Figure 7.13), and some of the processing that occurs in our frontal cortex (Figure 8.11) that allows us to analyze the sound and decide what to do about it.

But we haven’t said much yet about another path that the auditory signal takes: through a network of regions called the mesolimbic system.

The mesolimbic system, literally, the middle part of the limbic system, is a particular pathway that starts out in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain where dopamine is released.

Opioids (properly opioid peptides) are hormones that travel in the circulatory system and primarily serve to provide relief from pain, mimicking the effects of morphine on the body, among other functions (Chanda and Levitin 2013, 180). Levitin describes the mesolimbic system as “involved in arousal, pleasure, and the transmission of opioids and the production of dopamine, culminating in activation in the nucleus accumbens” (Levitin 2007, 191). The nucleus accumbens is part of the ventral striatum in the basal ganglia of the forebrain. Because of its role in providing this pleasure, the nucleus accumbens is known as the reward center of the brain (2007, 180).

In The Neurochemistry of Music, Chanda and Levitin update what we’ve learned and describe the arousal and reward process in more detail. It starts with developing an appetite for the reward, for example, when we get hungry, or, develop a craving for drugs. There are three parts to developing an appetite for a reward: learning about the reward, developing goal-directed behaviors to acquire the reward, and finally, anticipating getting the reward. The release of dopamine in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain regulates these behaviors. The reward of anticipation is consumption, consuming the thing that brings us reward. When we consume the desired commodity, the ventral tegmental area releases the neurotransmitter dopamine that stimulates the nervous system and the hormone opioid peptides that travel through the circulatory system. Both interact in the nucleus accumbens, creating subjective feelings of pleasure by the binding of opioid peptides to receptors there.

Of course, I wouldn’t have put you through all of this if it didn’t have something to do with the effects of music. In their paper, Chanda and Levitin document a number of studies that show that music has the same neuroanatomical and neurochemical effect on listeners, and uses the same mesolimbic system to unleash dopamine and opioids in the brain¹² (2013, 180–183). Hopefully this will not surprise you. Consider the old expression, “wine, women and song,” attributed to Martin Luther (Bartlett 1898, 811). Now consider the 1970s Ian Dury punk rock song, “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll,” which morphed into a similarly famous quotation, “drugs, sex and rock and roll,” in the latter part of the twentieth century. What do they have in common? Wine/drugs, women/sex, song/rock and roll? All three references describe activities that release dopamine and opioids in the brain. Isn’t that amazing? At the end of the day, music has a similar effect on us that drugs and sex do. No wonder everyone on the planet must have it, needs it, wants it and can’t live without it!

Fueled by music, it’s not hard to imagine then that music in the ancient rituals of the shaman really did provide a dopamine- and opioid-induced reaction that contributed to the altered states of consciousness we describe as ecstasy. Of course, the spirit journeys deep into caves were also most likely wrapped up in emerging cosmologies, social needs of tribes, and fueled by sensory deprivation and more. But it seems clear that the ecstasy that Lommel, Kirby and Winkelman all describe above as central to the shamanists’ ritual would have been fundamentally fueled by the rewards delivered by the music driving the ritual.

Sacks’ paradox provides a reward at the end of the journey. It allows the mind to fully experience the emotions of the journey—be they happy or sad, calming or terrifying—and reward the journey with a positive pleasurable experience. Inasmuch as theatre is a type of music, we should expect that theatre produces the same effects also. And we all have certainly experienced such journeys of untold angst and sadness, and somehow emerge satiated. Knowing that music provides this reward allows us to attach ideas to music that can explore the most difficult, emotionally distressing subjects, and yet still provide a rewarding experience. We don’t just go to theatre because we “should” go, or because it is “good for you.” We go because no matter how tragic the story, the music of theatre rewards us with pleasurable sensations that mitigate the difficult, tragic, depressing elements we may encounter along the way.

One final story that might help us to understand Sacks’ paradox. Don’t forget that while all this dopamine and opioid production has been going on, the inner ear has been communicating with the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and motor areas of the brain, perhaps causing us to move in time to our internal pulse entrained to the external tempo. One often discussed phenomenon that occurs during particularly exciting passages of music, and by association, particularly exciting moments of theatre, is called frisson. Frisson is an intense emotional reaction to music and theatre that sends “shivers” down your spine. My friend Chris Wagner used to call them “weebyjibbers.” Neurologist David Huron researched this and suggested that this reaction could be caused by an odd mix of fear and pleasure. The fear results immediately when we encounter something in music that is quite unpredictable, such as a rapidly large increase in loudness, an abrupt change in tempo or rhythm, or a broadening of frequencies due to an increase in sound sources. Such a change could induce a “startle effect” which travels quite quickly to the amygdala and cerebellum that trigger a motor reaction (shivers). Relatively shortly after that, the signal travels through our auditory cortex and gets processed by our frontal lobe, which indicates that the sound is indeed, not a threat, which causes a somewhat delayed pleasurable sensation (Lasky 2008). In this little microcosm, we see a sequence that is repeated often in music and theatre: immediate emotional reactions indicative of our total immersion in the moment, followed by a pleasant sensation when our conscious mind places the moment in its proper context.

But wait, there’s more! According to J. Allan Hobson, a pioneer in dream research, the cholinergic system (acetylcholine releasing, as found in our autonomic sympathetic and parasympathetic systems) modulates or changes dreaming, while the aminergic system (involving the neurotransmitters norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin) modulates our waking state (1994, 14). Rossano expands on Hobson’s and Martindale’s models that considers three factors in determining types of consciousness (2007, 91–92). The first is cognitive activation, activities that require focused attention and analytical processing. The second is neuromodulator mode, which determines whether the cholinergic or aminergic systems are more dominant in the brain. In waking focused consciousness, the two systems are highly active, but in balance with one another. As we tire during the day, the levels drop. At night while we sleep, however, the cholinergic activity increases back to our waking levels. However, aminergic activity remains low. Serotonin and norepinephrine levels, which are necessary to maintaining coherent thoughts remain low, and our dreams become much more fragmented and incoherent. The third factor in Hobson’s model is whether the information being processed by the brain is originating from outside of the brain (in our senses) or inside the brain (e.g., in our limbic system and other areas, as in dreaming). See Figure 9.10 below for a summary of the possible combinations of factors in different types of consciousness, and some speculation on my part of how theatre might fit into this paradigm.

Rossano finds in these models support for his theory of a fourth stage to the three-stage model we discussed at the outset of this chapter. Recall Rossano’s first three groups: (1) the general primate stage we explored in Chapter 5; (2) coordinated group mimesis such as proposed by Merlin Donald that we explored in Chapter 6; and (3) the emergence of shamanism out of group rituals as most likely the oldest form of religion. Rossano adds to these (4) the joining of human narrative capacity to ritual that ultimately would lead to songs and theatre.

Unfortunately, I know of no studies that have attempted to track the factors of Figure 9.10 in theatre audiences, because there are simply too many variables to control. That’s the great joy of being a member of the production team! I suspect that the results of such a study would vary quite significantly depending on the nature and quality of each audience member’s focus, arousal, and how “immersed” they happen to be in the scene (if you’ve ever been to a play, you know how the mind can wander!). But if we connect the dots of the discussion of this chapter we begin to see that we, as sound designers and composers, seem to have the ability to manipulate both cholinergic (through the autonomic nervous system) and aminergic states using music in theatre. If Rossano, Lewis-Williams and Winkelman are correct—that the level and balance of these two states contributes significantly to whether we are awake, asleep, or somewhere in between in an altered state of consciousness—then we should, as sound designers and composers, be able to use music to transport our audience into whatever state of consciousness we desire. We should be able to transport them equally well into the wide-awake and focused-on-the-scene consciousness Brecht seems to have preferred, or into a dream world of fantasy, imagination and free association associated with progressively more altered states of consciousness.

It is certainly interesting to speculate on the relationship between various levels of consciousness in the preceding model, and our own abilities to manipulate the audience using music in theatre. For example, I suspect that early in the performance the audience’s cholinergic/aminergic levels would be high and in balance, as they arrive and anxiously anticipate the start of the play. They are wide awake and consciously focused. However, as our performance unfolds, I suspect that aminergic levels would moderate as a natural result of becoming habituated to a comfortable theatre. If the audience’s cholinergic level were to also drop, they would probably fall asleep. In other words, if we don’t use music to arouse the audience in some of the many ways we have described, they will probably doze off to sleep. All of us can attest to this happening in a performance. Hopefully, the structure of the play generates enough “fight or flight” moments to keep that from happening. We’ll talk more about using musical structures to modulate their level of arousal later in this chapter.

A most interesting question is whether the information processed by the audience is internally or externally generated in the Model of Differing Consciousness Levels (Figure 9.10). In our earlier discussion, we suggested that this internal versus external generation of images is a factor controlled by the playwright and the production team. The production team exercises some control over how much of the information the medium of the performance gives the audience, versus how much each audience member has to construct themselves from their own experience. Still, there is a lot to be said for Rozik’s thesis that the real world of the theatre lies within the “spontaneous image-making faculty of the human psyche” (2002, xi).

In exploring and comparing the nature of audience activation with those on the spreadsheet above, then, it seems that the theatre experience really does compare to a true altered state of consciousness when we are at our very best in realizing the production. And even nicer, it’s an effect that we as sound designers and composers contribute to in a very fundamental way.

Cognitive Models for Music in Theatre

Robert Thayer’s Model of Psychological Moods

Before this chapter, we pretty much confined our discussion of the effects of music on humans to emotions which Hess and Thibault describe as “relatively short-duration intentional states that entrain changes in motor behavior, physiological changes and cognitions” (2009, 120). But remember, back in Chapter 1, how I described an experience listening to Pink Floyd that did not just incite an emotional reaction, but changed my mood? Robert Thayer produced a useful theory in 1996 that also has applications to our theatre-making processes. He considers moods to be similar to emotions, but typically not as intense and lasting longer. There is some evidence that listening to pleasant music elevates mood-enhancing serotonin levels as opposed to listening to unpleasant music, which appears to lower serotonin levels, although more research on that subject is needed (Evers and Suhr 2000). Moods are generally positive or negative, and conscious (we are usually aware of them, as are others around us). Positive moods appear to be related to high energy levels, and negative moods appear to be related to high tension (Thayer 1996, 5–6).

Thayer, however, sees moods as an interactive product of the two states of energy and tension expressed as continua, between tired and energetic, and calm and tense. This produces four archetypal states: people feel best when they are in a calm and energetic mood, and worst when they are in a tired and tense mood.

We tend to be in a calm and tired mood just before we fall to sleep. Perhaps the most interesting mood of all for us in theatre, is the combination of tense and energetic. As we discussed in the section on the sympathetic nervous system, tension releases acetylcholine, which in turn releases the hormone adrenaline. However, our bodies can release adrenaline while we are in either a tired or energetic mood (Thayer 1996, 11–14).

If we consider my journey listening to side three of Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, it’s easy to see that I began the journey in a very tense and tired state. But that first movement somehow transformed me with its rhythms, harmonies and dynamics from tired to energetic. The second movement piano solo calmed me down significantly, and the funky and dissonant third movement increased the tension again, but now in another more dreamlike world in which I was energetically engaged. It erupted into the quietude of the acoustic guitar and natural ambience of the fourth movement, and concluded with that whimsical group of small furry animals grooving with a pict. Tense/tired-calm/energetic-tense/energetic-calm/energetic-tense/energetic. No wonder I was transported and my mood changed! Notice how the music kept me engaged by continually manipulating my calm/tense states?

Consider then, how we use music in theatre to manipulate mood. To begin with, remember that the tools we use to create music are all related to manipulating energy in time and space: color, rhythm, mass/dynamics, line and texture. We create tension with dissonance, faster tempos, complex rhythms, sudden changes in mass, and louder sounds. We create calm through consonance, slower tempos, simple rhythms, habituation, and quieter sounds. We’ve just considered that if we don’t activate our cholinergic systems, and our aminergic system is low, we’ll probably fall asleep. We’ve also discovered that once activated, our cholinergic system will remain active for up to 15 minutes after we remove the stimulus. But if we continue the stimulus, the listener will habituate to it, and the music will lose its effect. This suggests a need for a structure in both music and theatre that alternates between tense and calm to maintain maximum arousal.

Having said this, you are probably saying to yourself, “well duh, we’ve known that since the dawn of theatre.” Throughout most of the history of autonomous theatre, we have ascribed the ups and downs of the theatre experience as due to “rising actions” that lead to a climactic moment, rather than as fundamental characteristics of the music driving the story. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, it seems that we have finally become more aware of the freedom that treating theatre structure as developed out of musical structure rather than linear rising actions provides us. We are no longer bound to linear presentations of time; we are free to explore simultaneous lines of actions that weave in and out of themselves; we may dispense with traditional storytelling altogether. In short, recognizing the foundations of theatre in music opens the door to the postmodern theatre. We realize that what is really important in our theatre journeys is the continuous manipulation of tension and release, perhaps building toward a climactic moment that provides us with the pleasurable reward of simply having experienced the journey. Our stories don’t need to be linear (of course they still can be), and they don’t need to meticulously follow in cause and effect fashion; they just need to keep us aroused. In practice, you can find examples of failure to observe this simple principle in both linear and non-linear theatre every time audience members start dozing off during a performance.

The process of manipulating the emotions and moods of the theatre audience begins the moment they enter the performance space. One can certainly imagine that the reason the shamans’ rituals took place in the deep dark recesses of caves was that the shamans wanted to make sure that everyone was in the right “mood” for the ritual-tense and energetic! Anthropologist Jean Clottes imagines that “the attitude of mind of Paleolithic people voluntarily going into what they thought was a supernatural realm—such a belief about the deep caves is widespread all over the world—must … have been quite favorable to inducing visions” (Winkelman 2002, 93). Getting an audience in a receptive mood is one of our most important functions before the performance begins, and we put a lot of effort in our theatres to accomplishing that. As sound designers and composers, we are often asked to “put the audience into an appropriate mood” from the moment they enter our theatre space. We call this period the “preshow.” Essentially our aim is to affect mood without (typically) affecting focus or attention, because if we attract attention, then we have, for all practical purposes, simply started the play with the preshow, and that probably makes the first 30 minutes (or however long the preshow lasts) really boring.

We have little control over the mood of the audience when they enter. If our marketing team has done a great job, a large portion of them will hopefully enter the theatre in a calm but energetic mood, excitedly anticipating the performance. On the other hand, if the babysitter backed out at the last minute, and the check came late at dinner, and work was a bear and it’s only Wednesday night and someone has to get up early in the morning … well, it’s highly likely that some of our audience, despite the best efforts of our marketing team, will enter in a tired/tense mood. And our job is get them into a calm/energetic mood.

We start with comfortable seats and maybe even the option of an alcoholic beverage at the lobby bar. We give them a program to get their minds off of where they’ve been and focused on where they are now. And then we subtly work to increase their energy. There are as many ways to do this as there are sound designers and composers, and even in a preshow, one must be conscious of varying the tension to keep from lulling the audience asleep.

One other thing I’d like to mention that is not often thought about in theatre: curtain times and arousal. Has anyone ever wondered why most shows start at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m., and matinees start at 2:00 p.m.? Curiously these start times seem to play right into human circadian rhythms, one of the human body’s key oscillators that is controlled by secretions of the hormone melatonin (derived from serotonin) in the pineal gland (see Figure 8.11). It turns out that we tend to reach our peak energy levels about seven hours after we wake, and again about 13 hours after we wake (Thayer 1996, 16–17). Of course, the effects vary widely for different people, and this is on average. But if we wake at 7:00 a.m., that suggests that we peak at 2:00 p.m., and then again at 8:00 p.m. We are most likely to be in calm/energetic moods at curtain time! Notice then, that both our cholinergic and aminergic activations will start to decrease as the play wears on, lulling us into either sleep or an altered state of consciousness, if we are able to activate cholinergic levels by increasing tension. If we composers and sound designers are doing our job well, it might just be that we can prevent sleep and incite altered states of consciousness—although, at the end of the day, there’s not much we can do if our audience is dog-tired!

Berlyne’s Theory of Arousal in Aesthetics and Psychobiology

Once the performance starts, we are faced with the somewhat daunting task of continuously maintaining arousal over a period of a couple of hours or more. We know now that we must cyclically increase tension, and that we will use the elements of music at our disposal to accomplish this. When the curtain goes up, however, we enter into a different realm, one in which we must work to focus the audience’s attention to the matters at hand. Unlike the preshow, where we consciously worked to ensure that we did not command the audience’s focus, now we must use our music continuously to direct the audience’s attention. As anyone who has ever staged a theatre production knows, this is much easier said than done.

One of the more significant influences on my own personal aesthetic over the last ten years has been neuroscientist, Michael Thaut, who has done amazing research on rhythm. More importantly, he has focused his research on developing groundbreaking therapies that use music to treat such baffling diseases as Parkinson’s disease. Thaut introduced me to D.E. Berlyne’s theories in Aesthetics and Psychobiology, a book Thaut describes as generations ahead of its time (Thaut 2005, 19; Berlyne 1971). Berlyne’s theories helped me understand important underlying mechanisms we use in music and theatre to focus the attention of our audience on our very temporal art forms. The ideas that I present below, then, are necessarily a combination of Berlyne’s original work, and Thaut’s connection of them to modern neuroscience.

Berlyne proposes two key dimensions in art that produce arousal: energy and structure. We have spent most of this book identifying how humans came to apprehend elements of energy in music, which Berlyne describes as (our terms follow in parenthesis) tempo (rhythm), intensity (mass), waveform (envelope), color (Berlyne also uses this word rather than timbre for its cross-modal applications [1971, 69]), and rate change (energy/time or dynamics). The brain processes energy changes in terms of excitement, intensity or stimulation. We have only recently begun to address questions of structure in this chapter, which Berlyne describes as melody (line), harmony (texture), rhythm and form. Structure and energy manipulation create expectations whose resolution (or lack thereof) leads to an emotional response. For example, Thaut suggests:

Thaut also notes that Berlyne’s theories are driven by Gestalt perception, the psychological theory that the “whole” is a different entity than simply the sum of individual parts, a concept that it would be wise for us to not forget as we continue to investigate so many parts (2005, 21)!

The essence of Berlyne’s theory is that we derive a pleasurable, positive aesthetic experience based on the complexity created by the energy and structure of the work. As energy and structure increase in complexity, arousal is increasingly activated. At some point, however, we reach a point of maximum acceptable complexity. If the energy and structures become more complex than this, we start to reject the work. We can plot this response as an “inverted U.”

In theatre, there are three typical cycles involving activation that we distinguish by their length. The cycles themselves typically involve three actions. They start with some form of habituation, which is followed by an action that breaks the habituation and activates us, creating arousal. Once aroused we enter a stage of anticipation (suspense), in which we look for a resolution that may or may not come. The three larger activation cycles are the acting beat, the scene, and the entire play. All three of these cycles work simultaneously, increasing complexity as the play unfolds.

We refer to the shortest cycle as an acting beat, musically we often refer to this as a cadence. Acting beats are the smallest units of action that contain the entire process of habituation, activation, arousal, anticipation and resolution. Typically, we call the “beat” the slight pause caused by the minor moment of temporary suspension or resolution, before the next beat begins. Depending on their length, they find their foundations in the periods of music, a complete section of music that (typically) suspends or resolves in the form of a cadence. Keep in mind, however, that theatre is its own peculiar form of music, so it would be a mistake to attempt to impose another style such as the traditional antecedent/consequent requirements of classical music onto this period form.

In traditional storytelling, we start each scene with some sort of habituation, the so-called given circumstances for the scene. The scene is activated by something unexpected that disrupts the status quo. This creates arousal, for which we anticipate resolution, which the scene may or may not provide. This process is fundamentally a musical one, and, as orchestrators of each scene, we are charged with finding the “magic point” of activation that creates maximum arousal, acceptance and aesthetic pleasure. In many cases, the music (prosody) of the dialogue is all that is needed, in others, the composer and sound designer can increase arousal through additional orchestrations which increase the sonic complexity, and, presumably, the activation level of the scene (just ask any director of an action or adventure film). In some scenes, there is no dialogue whatsoever, and the musical orchestrations create the required sonic complexity to reach maximum arousal all by themselves. Scenes are specific types of musical movements that, even though they exist in the larger form of the play, can typically be performed on their own and provide an aesthetically pleasing sense of closure in and of themselves.

The largest structural form is the arc of the play itself. In typical linear types of plays, each scene builds and resolves itself, but increases the overall complexity of the story in a manageable way, so that each scene builds to a musical climax, typically the point of highest tension and arousal, and, as you can imagine, is often characterized by the fastest tempos, loudest dynamics, most dissonance. Even plays without linear storylines, however, seem to want to have an overall arc that slowly builds tension throughout the entire length of the performance—although there are, of course exceptions. Resolution follows the climax, and it is here where the structural form of the story differs most significantly from the musical form. The resolution in the story typically establishes a new order in the world that results from the way the climax resolved. The musical form—and this is often the case in the music of theatre also, typically recapitulates important themes from earlier in the play. The reason for this divergence has to do with memory—which we will explore in our next chapter.

Conclusion: Experiments in Ecstasy

We began this chapter by exploring the roots of theatre in ritual. We discovered in our Upper Paleolithic past much evidence of the emergence of ritual in Homo sapiens throughout the inhabited world. The emergence of the shaman, a religious leader who took on the character of animals and spirits, suggested an origin for the final piece of the theatre puzzle that separates traditional storytelling (song) from theatre: mimesis. In the shaman’s ritual, we found an almost singular requirement: leading its participants into ecstasy. We found the primary technique of the shaman in entering altered states of consciousness, and investigated its relationship to other states of consciousness, and the neurological similarities between altered states of consciousness and theatre. We then looked into the neuroscience of the shaman’s technique, looking for correlations between primitive rituals and modern theatre. We found those in the ability of music to create arousal as evidenced in the physiological stimulation of cardiovascular, respiratory and other systems, and in the psychological systems which provide rewards in the brain. We found a neurological connection between ecstasy and music. Finally, we looked at the most fundamental ways that we use music in theatre to create these epic journeys: to manipulate mood, stimulate arousal, and create the various musical structures in the play.

Over the years, as I’ve slowly come to fully understand the implications of the foundations of theatre in music, I’ve become more and more interested in exploring what I call the “gray area” between theatre and music, concert and play. About 20 years ago, I started asking questions about why young people don’t go to the theatre; about the oft remarked “sea of white,” the “gray-hairs” one encounters when you stand at the back of the theatre and scan the audience. So I began a journey collaborating with my punk rock–producing friend Mass Giorgini on our own punk rock musical, Awakening—15 years before Broadway co-opted the idea into its own hit, Spring Awakening. I discovered that young people would go to the theatre if the theatre offered something that appealed to them.

As time went on I found other groups of young people who were interested in exploring and exploding theatre form to target younger audiences.

In 2010, on a whim I headed to Chicago to see Green Day play live at the United Center. I had become enamored with their album, American Idiot, and actually consider it to be one of the best popular music albums since the Beatles. Mass had worked quite a bit with Green Day in their early careers, and he held them in the highest regard. I was psyched (calm and very energetic!). So, I went up early in the day, camped out all day to avoid getting stuck in the nose-bleeds of general admission land, and secured a place in the mosh pit within spitting distance of the stage. There’s no other way I can describe that concert experience other than absolute ecstasy. And I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. I had a shared experience with the band and the crowd that night that was more intense than any I had ever experienced in theatre.

After the Green Day concert, I got together with a group of like-minded artists at Purdue and we created a new theatre experience based on gaming, Ad Infinitum.³ One novel invention of the performance was that audience members could use their smartphones to create avatars on the screen as a part of the performance, an attempt to create an active performance that would draw and arouse young people and break down the proverbial fourth wall. In gaming, each audience member doesn’t simply identify with the protagonist, they become their own protagonist. In the spring of 2011 we had a workshop performance at Purdue before we took the production to its eventual opening at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. The audience entered and politely sat in their seats and the production began. As the performance began, people sat quietly and politely played the game, when suddenly two of our composers, Andy Muehlhausen and Ryan Hopper, started yelling at the screen. I was incensed! What were they doing? You don’t talk out loud at plays! I went home and mulled it all over during a long and sleepless night, and realized that they were right. The wall that had been built between the audience and the play in the eighteenth century was killing the very fundamental purpose of our theatre: the ritual gathering of our community. We held a meeting the next day and decided that we would take the seats out, and re-imagine the performance as a loud participatory ritual experience in which the audience stood, and hopefully danced. We actively encouraged them to vocally participate in every moment of the performance. The difference in audience response was night and day, and we came close to providing that elusive experience of collective ecstasy.

As I had been studying the rituals and primitive cultures of early shamans, I became preoccupied with creating that ecstasy in a theatre audience. I wanted to do for theatre what Green Day and any number of other bands were already doing for song and music. I had already been to a number of EDM (electronic dance music) festivals, another place where the pursuit of ecstasy was a prime reason for attending. I decided to gather another group of like-minded artists together, this time in pursuit of a theatre piece grounded in EDM. I wanted to see if I could bring the audience during the climactic moments of the play to the same frenetic ecstatic moment I had found in so many of the music concerts I had been attending. Over the summer, I met with our projections designer, Kindari O’Connor, and we slowly developed a story, grounded in music, but still embracing the hallmarks of theatre in a cohesive story (although not at all linear).

We created the production and performed it for a couple of packed houses at Purdue in the spring of 2014. Again, we dispensed with seats, forcing the audience to stand—because it’s really hard to dance sitting down, don’t you know. It wasn’t until I was editing down the video for eventual exhibition as part of the USITT National Exhibit in 2015 that I found the perfect evidence of ecstasy in the audience I was hoping for. Sure, we had managed to get the entire crowd jumping up and down, waving their hands in the air, and chanting along to the music in the climax. But as the music subsided and then faded away and the performers left the stage, the camera panned back exposing the audience reaction. Lots of exhausted audience members, and toward the back of the audience, hugging it out, were two guys, clearly overcome by the ecstasy of the moment.

You don’t see that too often in theatre. Tony award–winning theatre, probably not; but an experience the audience will not forget can be all that you’ll ever need to come back for your next production.

Ten Questions, Part I

1. What two basic activities does anthropologist Michael Winkelman attribute to shamanism that have important implications for the emergence of theatre?
2. What is anthropomorphism, and what is its relationship to sound in the worldview of our ancestors?
3. What is an altered state of consciousness, and what does music have to do with it?
4. How does an altered state of consciousness compare to dreaming? How does it differ?
5. What’s the first step in entering an altered state of consciousness, and how do we accomplish it in theatre?
6. What is arousal, and what does it have to do with neurotransmitters?
7. Describe the basic characteristics of the cholinergic and aminergic neurotransmitter systems.
8. What is the relationship between stimulating and relaxing music and the autonomic nervous system? Name two things we must remember about using music to affect the autonomic nervous system.
9. What is the relationship between habituation and startle and the auto- nomic nervous system?
10. Describe the relationship between blood pressure, breathing, heart rate and music, especially phrasing.

Things to Share, Part I

1. Divide the class into groups of three to five members, about four groups per class. Each group goes online and researches techniques on how to enter an altered state of consciousness (endogenous drugs ONLY, please!). They develop and lead a short five- to seven-minute exercise in which they attempt to lead the audience into an altered state of consciousness using music as a core element. A representative from each group will lead the class in a five-minute discussion after the exercise to explore the experience of the participants.

Ten Questions Part II

1. What is the difference between expressing and inciting emotion and presenting and representing emotion?
2. Describe four distinct pathways that sound takes after being transduced into nerve impulses by the cochlea, and their purpose.
3. Describe the three parts to developing an appetite for a reward.
4. What is the reward for satiating appetite, and how does it work in terms of neurotransmitters and hormones?
5. What is Sacks’ paradox, and how does it relate to theatre?
6. How does David Huron explain that frisson works?
7. Describe three factors in determining types of consciousness (e.g., dreaming versus awake), and explain the similarities between theatre and altered states of reality relative to the three factors.
8. Identify Thayer’s four basic moods, relate them to theatre, and explain a fundamental structure used in both theatre and music to maintain maximum arousal.
9. Explain Berlyne’s theory of arousal in aesthetics and psychoacoustics in terms relevant to music and theatre.
10. Describe the five elements of each arousal cycle in terms of the three major cycles we typically encounter in theatre productions, and how they relate to music.

Things to Share, Part II

1. Divide the class into groups of three to five people, about four groups. Each group will work to create a two- to five-minute ritual/theatre experience grounded in music that will lead the audience into a moment of ecstasy. Feel free to embrace and explore as many of the techniques explored in this chapter as possible, from shamans to EDM, through creating a cycle of habituation, activation, arousal, anticipation and resolution, by combining storytelling with an original sound score, involving everyone in the class or allowing those outside of the group to participate as audience (literally meaning to hear) members; the possibilities are endless.

Notes

1Hypnagogic is simply our state of mind just before we fall asleep.

2Recall our discussion in Chapter 4 of José Rivera’s description of theatre as “collective dreaming,” another way to consider the shamanistic ritual.

3Strung rattles are simply rattles hung from various parts of clothing to make audible the movements of different parts of the body, such as arms, legs, hips, etc.

4I’m hoping that you have also noticed Winkleman’s subtle reinforcement of one of the primary theses of this book: theatre = idea (image) + music (chanting) + mimesis. Winkleman takes this concept one step further by suggesting that it played a large role in the development of human cognitive abilities.

5Choline is simply a water-soluble nutrient found in most animals. Acetylcholine is one type of choline.

6Acetylcholine also triggers the release of the hormone adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) produced in the adrenal gland. Hormones are chemicals that travel through the circulatory system to control physiological response, in this case, the “fight or flight” mechanism of the sympathetic nervous system, explained below.

7Another naturally occurring chemical derived from amino acids.

8Cross uses different descriptions to describe similar things: he describes stimulating music as “fast, loud, broad in tessitura and bright in timbre” and relaxing music as “low, soft, narrow in tessitura and negatively valenced.”

9Rostral ventrolateral, if you must know.

10Their tests showed, however, that the synchronization between respiratory rate and acoustic tempo does not need to be particularly tight in order to stimulate the cardiovascular system. In their tests, they kept respiratory rate steady at 80 cycles per minute, while varying the tempo of the external music from between 78, 80 and 82 beats per minute. In all cases, they showed an increase in heart rate (2015, 8).

11See our discussion of “indicating” in the last chapter.

12In Levitin’s studies, activation of the ventral tegmental area also activated the hypothalamus, which is known to modulate our autonomic responses including heart rate and respiration. They also found significant interactions with the insula and orbitofrontal cortex, which are also involved in autonomic, somatic and emotional functions (2007, 181–182).

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