A theatrical metanarrative of Cervantes’ Don Quixote: Dramaturgy, corporeality and play

In 2018, Efi Birba offered the Greek public a different theatrical version of the famous Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. Exclusively profiting the storytelling dynamic of the body, she used playing as the main tool of the literary interpretation and meaningfulness. Her directorial choices removed her from the concept of theatrical adaptation and introduced her into the field of metanarration. In this article, I explore the dramaturgical rhetoric of the performance and the narrative devices being used in. Highlighting the concept of ‘play’ as the main technique, I point out the performative flow as a non-verbal field where the body may not just represent or tell a story, but actually be that story and shift it from one level to another. Questions about corporeal awareness, timing and spatiality are raised, as well as questions about the metanarrative potential of a corporeal performance to translate literary meanings and deepen into allegorical insights and symbolisms.

The “embreathment” illusion highlights the role of breathing in corporeal awareness

Recent theories posit that physiological signals contribute to corporeal awareness, the basic feeling that one has a body (body ownership) that acts according to one’s will (body agency) and occupies a specific position (body location). Combining physiological recordings with immersive virtual reality, we found that an ecological mapping of real respiratory patterns onto a virtual body illusorily changes corporeal awareness. This new way of inducing a respiratory bodily illusion, called “embreathment,” revealed that breathing is almost as important as visual appearance for inducing body ownership and more important than any other cue for body agency. These effects were moderated by individual levels of interoception, as assessed through a standard heartbeat-counting task and a new “pneumoception” task. By showing that respiratory, visual, and spatial signals exert a specific and weighted influence on the fundamental feeling that one is an embodied agent, we pave the way for a comprehensive hierarchical model of corporeal awareness. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Our body is the only object we sense from the inside; however, it is unclear how much inner physiology contributes to the global sensation of having a body and controlling it. We combine respiration recordings with immersive virtual reality and find that making a virtual body breathe like the real body gives an illusory sense of ownership and agency over the avatar, elucidating the role of a key physiological process like breathing in corporeal awareness.

The Merging Tracks of Anosognosia and Neglect

Anosognosia and hemineglect are among the most startling neurological phenomena identified during the 20th century. Though both are associated with right hemisphere cerebral dysfunction, notably stroke, each disorder had its own distinct literature. Anosognosia, as coined by Babinski in 1914, describes patients who seem to have no idea of their paralysis, despite general cognitive preservation. Certain patients seem more than unaware, with apparent resistance to awareness. More extreme, and qualitatively distinct, is denial of hemiplegia. Various interpretations of pathogenesis are still deliberated. As accounts of its captivating manifestations grew, anosognosia was established as a prominent symbol of neurological and psychic disturbance accompanying (right-hemisphere) stroke. Although reports of specific neglect-related symptomatology appeared earlier, not until nearly 2 decades after anosognosia’s inaugural definition was neglect formally defined by Brain, paving a path spanning some years, to depict a class of disorder with heterogeneous variants. Disordered awareness of body and extrapersonal space with right parietal lesions, and other symptom variations, were gathered under the canopy of neglect. Viewed as a disorder of corporeal awareness, explanatory interpretations involve mechanisms of extinction and perceptual processing, disturbance of spatial attention, and others. Odd alterations involving apparent concern, attitudes, or belief characterize many right hemisphere conditions. Anosognosia and neglect are re-examined, from the perspective of unawareness, the nature of belief, and its baffling distortions. Conceptual parallels between these 2 distinct disorders emerge, as the major role of the right hemisphere in mental representation of self is highlighted by its most fascinating syndromes of altered awareness.

'Embreathment' illusion reveals hierarchical influence of respiratory, visual and spatial signals on corporeal awareness

Recent theories posit that physiological signals contribute to corporeal awareness – the basic feeling that one has a body (body ownership) which acts according to one’s will (body agency) and occupies a specific position (body location). However, these signals are notoriously difficult to manipulate. Using immersive virtual reality, we found that an ecological mapping of real respiratory patterns onto a virtual body led to illusory changes of corporeal awareness. This new bodily illusion, called ‘embreathment’, revealed that breathing uniquely influences corporeal awareness over and above other bodily cues. In particular, breathing turned out to be almost as important as visual appearance for inducing body ownership, and more important than any other cue for body agency. By showing that respiratory, visual and spatial signals exert an interoception-mediated, specific, and weighted influence on the fundamental feeling that one is an embodied agent, we pave the way for a comprehensive hierarchical model of corporeal awareness.

Bunster, Patricio (1924–2006)

Patricio Bunster’s career was emblematic of a Latin American engagement with European modernism and unique in its exchange with German modern dance (Ausdruckstanz). Trained in Chile by immigrant German members of Kurt Jooss’s company, Bunster merged a local vocabulary with globalized movements—such as modern dance vocabulary derived from Ausdruckstanz and ballet—with the goal of restructuring existing nationally defined movement. This merger was utopian in its rethinking of national culture toward a global artistic expression. Such a utopian understanding of the capacity of movement as a global unifier and transformer recalled early modern dance’s vision for a changed world through corporeal awareness and choreographed emancipation. Influenced by Laban as well as Jooss and Leeder, Bunster observed and deployed movement found in manual labor, leisure, daily rituals, nature, and the structure of architecture. In Bunster’s opinion, all of these sources carried traces of future choreographies that could express a new transnational, (Latin) American, and utopian society. Different utopian models, such as the radical rethinking of political structures through a breakdown of the barrier between art and life or the embracing of technology in relation to design for the bettering of society were at the core of modernist conviction that the world needed to be fundamentally changed.