Theatre / improbable
Review: Mayfest: Opening Skinner’s Box
Based on Lauren Slater’s popular science bestseller, Improbable’s Opening Skinner’s Box is first and foremost a theatrical re-enactment of ten landmark psychological experiments. All the classics that every first-year psychology student has studied are here: Milgram’s electric shock experiment (65% of subjects were prepared to administer a lethal shock when instructed to do so), Festinger’s examination of the cognitive dissonance triggered when prophecies fail, Alexander’s discovery that happy rats will not choose to become heroin addicts, and the fatal consequences of bystander effect which allowed Kitty Genovese to be murdered within earshot of 38 witnesses.
Woven through this – in the form of verbatim quotes from the book – is Slater’s own journey, probing at the meaning and implications of these discoveries, seeking to make sense of her own life and of what it means to be human. As the story unfolds and Slater’s character comes to play a more central role in the account, particularly after the interval, the threads pull together and start to lift the piece to a more powerful, self-scrutinising level. Slater becomes the factor often lacking in modern science – a synthesist who can assemble different pieces of experimental data and start to paint a larger, more philosophical picture of the nature of people: who we are and what makes us do the things we do.
The staging of Slater’s book never seeks to deny the roots of its material. There are moments of pure theatre – the enactment of electroshock therapy is a coup de theatre – but in many ways Opening Skinner’s Box feels like a blend of a rehearsed book reading and an illustrated psychology lecture.
On a bare set consisting only of a giant wire-frame box, the cast of six besuited, bow-tied actors flicker between characters whilst remaining in some ways always rooted in themselves. There are, for example, no attempts at American accents – something which, ironically and perhaps intentionally, introduces some mild cognitive dissonance in the audience themselves.
But the staging brings another dimension to the work – an enriching, sometimes comical and sometimes moving layer of performance. And concentrating the 300 pages of Slater’s book into a two-hour theatrical experience makes her synthesis all the more impactful. The audience leaving the theatre are probably more pensive, more totally immersed in what they have just learned, than they would if they had simply turned the final page.
Opening Skinner’s Box was performed at Bristol Old Vic on Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21 as part of Mayfest. For more info, visit www.mayfestbristol.co.uk/mayfest2016/opening-skinners-box
Pic: Topher McGrillis
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