The Quark and the Jaguar

Bibliography: Relations of Science to Literature and the Arts 1998

This dissertation investigates the potential applications of the scientific paradigm known as "chaos theory" in the examination of dramatic theory. By illuminating the limitations of traditional Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry, chaos theory conveys philosophical implications that transcend the scientific and provide suitable tools for describing cultural and artistic phenomena. These implications include emphases on unpredictability, interaction and feedback, qualitative rather than quantitative analyses, and a nonlinear, continuous, even holistic perspective of systems traditionally viewed as dichotomous (such as order and disorder or part and whole). This study examines several standard works of dramatic theory, concentrating on the relationship of the formal to the spontaneous in the creation of theatrical art and how chaos theory may provide a vocabulary for discussing intangible experiences (such as catharsis). Specific attention is given to Aristotle's P o e t i c s . Dryden's "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," Coleridge's Bioctraphia Literaria, and Artaud's The Theatre and Its D o u b l e . The conclusions include an analysis of Richard Foreman's theatrical art and theories in the contexts of poststructuralism and postmodernism. The respective theoretical writings of the figures discussed in this dissertation each display attempts to

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Creativity and the Cathartic Moment: Chaos Theory and the Art of Theatre.

This dissertation investigates the potential applications of the scientific paradigm known as "chaos theory" in the examination of dramatic theory. By illuminating the limitations of traditional Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry, chaos theory conveys philosophical implications that transcend the scientific and provide suitable tools for describing cultural and artistic phenomena. These implications include emphasis on unpredictability, interaction and feedback, qualitative rather that quantitative analyses, and a nonlinear, continuous, even holistic perspective of systems traditionally viewed as dischotomous (such as order and disorder or part and whole). This study examines several standard works of dramatic theory, concentrating on the relationship of the formal to the spontaneous in the creation of theatrical art and how chaos theory may provide a vocabulary for discussing intangible experiences (such as catharsis). Specific attention is given to Aristotle's Poetics, Dryden's "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double. The conclusions include an analysis of Richard Foreman's theatrical art and theories in the contexts of poststructuralism and postmodernism. The respective theoretical writings of the figures discussed in this dissertation each display attempts to describe some sort of an ineffable, chaotic moment involving theatrical experience and/or creativity. This point alone brings no new insight to the works of these theorists. When examined through a framework of chaos theory, however, such emphasis on these moments reveals the central roles they play in the theorists' accounts of the creation and experience of the theatre event. In this light, the traditional distinctions between the theories of these four individuals collapse, revealing underlying commonalities in their analyses of the processes and effects of theatrical art. Chaos theory, therefore, promises to offer a common foundation for speaking about the creation and reception of theatrical art. Although each theorist will experience a different perception of "nature," they will nevertheless observe the same similar patterns and chaotic moments of creation at work underneath it all. The same will be true in creation and perception of art, thus overcoming the poststructuralist lack of foundation and the postmodern impasse to meaning that limits contemporary theory. 

Since her debut as a playwright in the 1960s, Fornes has always shown an interest in rewriting and parodying the conventions of romance melodrama, mostly the clash of forces found in the love triangle, and the role of the heroine as the object of masculine desire and the moral adhesive of the family. The Successful Life of 3, Molly’s Dream, Sarita, The Conduct of Life, and Mud subvert the status quo of gender relations by using a plethora of popular theatrical formulas. Mud can be analyzed as a «reverse discourse» (Foucault, 1978) insofar as it makes use of the old melodrama tropes and images. The reappropriation of Man Ray’s surrealist image of the starfish as used in L’etoile de mer (1928) is a clear example of Fornes’ feminist epistemology: by representing Mae’s identity in the negative male vocabulary, the playwright is producing a new narrative of the female self which is at odds with the patriarchal model of femininity. Far from embodying the dentata (the castrating femme fatale), Mae stops being and doing what Lloyd and Henry expect from her. Her final desire to abandon the house raises the possibility of building up a new world where the quest for knowledge becomes the new guide to womanhood.

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Estrellas de mar: Maria Irene Fornes y la reescritura femenina del melodrama Starfish: Maria Irene Fornes and the Feminist Rewriting of Melodrama

Cara Gargano sees the plays of Maria Irene Fornes as reflecting ‘nucleate disorder in a system far from equilibrium’ – a theatrical response to the overturning by the new science of the Aristotelian as of the Newtonian paradigm. Comparing the wildly divergent critical interpretations of Fornes' Mud since its premiere in 1983, she suggests that in this overtly simple dramatization of a far from simple triangular relationship, Fornes ‘uses the theatrical space as her laboratory – a place to explore the interface between our society's construction of the world and our evolving artistic and scientific vision’. Cara Gargano is a writer, teacher, and choreographer who took her doctorate at the City University of New York, was on the faculty at the New York School of Ballet, and is presently Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has written extensively on the Quebecoise playwright Marie Laberge, and her articles on performance, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory have been published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Theâtrale , and Dance and Research .

The Starfish and the Strange Attractor: Myth, Science, and Theatre as Laboratory in Maria Irene Fornes' ‘Mud’

Today, argues Cara Gargano, we are at the cusp of a scientific paradigm shift which is having a profound influence on the way we construct our art and our identity. Like the shift from an oral to a literary mode of communication, or from a geocentric to a heliocentric world view, the movement from a Newtonian to a quantum world view has altered not only the way we understand our universe but the way we write and perform it. In recent years, critics David R. George, Natalie Crohn Schmitt, David Porush, and William Demastes have used terminology and concepts from the ‘new science’ to theorize about theatre. In this article Cara Gargano explores three new works that premiered in the 1995–96 New York City season – Rent, Interfacing Joan , and The Universe ( ie, How It Works ) – and discusses the way these performances rely, consciously or unconsciously, on this paradigm shift. She proposes that all three plays, while different in style, venue, and narrative, have at their base an assumption of a quantum universe – that is, they create a holistic mythology that gestures toward the theatre's origins as a ritual interaction with our world, and moves from a postmodern to a pre-millennial stance. Cara Gargano is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Theâtrale, New Theatre Quarterly , and Dance and Research . Her recent article in Reliologiques deals with the myth of Orpheus as a model for the quantum world.

Complex Theatre: Science and Myth in Three Contemporary Performances

Ancient myth and modern science share a common, cosmic perception of dance as the formulating principle of the universe – whether through metaphor, in the perception of a ‘biodance of life’, or in the closeness to actuality of the ‘dance of the electrons’ at a sub-atomic level. A line of articles in NTQ has explored such connections, with theatrical examples deriving from and illuminating the scientific theory under discussion – but with dance, strangely, relatively neglected as a source of such examples. Here, Cara Gargano takes a number of major modern dance events from the span of the twentieth century to show the interaction between dance and scientific theory, from Loïe Fuller's work at its beginning to Maguy Marin's Coppélia towards its end. The latter, she argues, ‘brings quantum mechanics and chaos theory into the sociological realm’ as it demonstrates ‘how consciousness and social relations are tied to the new physics’. Cara Gargano is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University. She has published in Modern Drama, L'Annuaire Théâtrale, and Dance and Research. In New Theatre Quarterly, her earlier contributions on plays which construct their world to reflect the new science were published in NTQ51 and NTQ54.

Cara Gargano

Papers

The Starfish and the Strange Attractor: Myth, Science, and Theatre as Laboratory in Maria Irene Fornes' ‘Mud’

Complex Theatre: Science and Myth in Three Contemporary Performances

Bodies, Rest, and Motion: from Cosmic Dance to Biodance