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.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50