In a world where on-screen violence has become commonplace, Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is turning to science to discover whether the playwright can still make our hearts race more than 400 years on.
The renowned theatre company has started measuring the pulse of audience members as they are confronted by some of the most harrowing scenes ever written by Shakespeare in the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus.
The play, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, is a tale of murderous revenge and savagery.
Photo: AFP
In one scene, a bloodied Lavinia writhes on stage after rapists cut off her hands and tongue.
Audience members have been known to pass out or vomit at the play’s shocking cruelty during performances.
Becky Loftus, head of audience insight at the RSC, is spearheading the innovative study to measure reactions to the English Renaissance writer’s work.
“It’s notoriously Shakespeare’s bloodiest play... It can be quite polarizing because of the amount of violence in it,” Loftus told AFP.
“Are we inured to violence now because of things like [television show] Game of Thrones?” she said.
The comparative study is being carried out in the theater and at a live-streaming of the play in a cinema in Stratford — the town in central England where Shakespeare was born in 1564.
“Some people feel that it’s never as good to be in the cinema, because you don’t get the effect of being in the room and having people act in front of you. But then some people say that being in the cinema is like having the best seat in the house and you get the closer view,” Loftus said.
Many participants in the study, including 60-year-old scientist Sharon Faulkner, said they were more engaged in the theater.
“It appeals to all of your senses. Rather than just visual and hearing, there are the smells. So I think it’s much more real,” she said.
BASIC HUMAN INSTINCT
At a light-hearted briefing before the performance, one group of participants talked about how they were feeling and were asked to take some deep breaths in their seats before the opening scene.
Faulkner and fellow volunteer Jamie Megson said theatergoers can be passionate about a performance but are usually unaware of their pulses, as black heart rate monitors were strapped to their wrists.
“You get lost in the action of the play, so it’s hard to say whether it’s been more intense in certain moments than others,” said 27-year-old Megson, an English teacher.
Although the full results from the study are not expected until later this year, an initial analysis showed heart rates rising as audience members become aware a moment of violence may be imminent.
“The biggest reaction is the fight or flight — basic human instinct,” said Pippa Bailey from Ipsos Mori, a research firm that is helping to conduct the study.
“When something happens you either stay and you fight or you run when the adrenaline comes,” she said.
Participants are monitored during the performance and afterwards take part in an exit interview.
“We’re doing voice recordings where we will analyze that to see people’s emotional engagement in what they’re saying” by looking at both the choice of words and the sentiment in their voice, Bailey said. The RSC has previously relied on questionnaires to try and understand the impact of their productions.
Megson said he was more affected by the interaction between characters, such as when Lavinia’s uncle takes her to her father Titus after the brutal attack, than moments of extreme violence such as severed heads being brought on stage.
“It’s the acting that’s the more shocking element, the emotions that they’re showing that’s the more intense element, more than the gore and shock factor,” he said.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built