An illuminating look into the cognitive processes at play when we cast theatrical and political figures—as well as everyday people—as characters
Description
What can we learn about how we understand each other and ourselves by examining the casting we find on stage and film—the casting we find perfect and the casting we find wrong? Building Character examines how the process of “casting” an actor in a part creates a character and how this can be usefully understood through deploying theories from the cognitive sciences. A casting director may match the perceived qualities of an actor with the perceived qualities of the character, but the combination is also synergistic; casting a character creates qualities. While casting directors do this professionally, all of us do this when we make sense of the people around us. This book argues that we build the characters of others from a sea of stimuli and that the process of watching actors take on roles improves our ability to “cast” those roles in our daily lives. Amy Cook examines the visible celebrity casting, such as Robert Downey Jr. as Ironman or Judi Dench as Bond’s M, the political casting of one candidate as “presidential” and another as “weak,” the miscasting of racial profiling and sexual assault, and the counter casting that results when actors and characters are not where or who we expect.
Amy Cook is Associate Professor of English and Theatre Arts, Stony Brook University.
Reviews
""An innovative and important interdisciplinary project that challenges old ways of interpreting theatre history and social performance."
- Carol Mejia LaPerle
-- Theatre Survey
"Building Character is a worthwhile addition to theatre and performance studies scholarship. Its strength lies in Cook’s persuasive defense of the opportunity afforded by cognitive science to rethink the relationship among actor, character, and spectator." - Jim Williams, Theatre Journal
- Jim Williams
"To unpack how factors such as age, race, gender, physical attributes, historical and personal information, and reputation make an actor feel “right” or “wrong” for a role, theatre history and performance studies scholars can now turn to Amy Cook’s Building Character: The Art and Science of Casting."
- Gibson Alessandro Cima
-Comparative Drama