We worked on 'A Disappearing Number'
which is obviously my home territory of mathematics
but then I got this phone call when I was out in America saying
'Hey, I'm thinking about consciousness' and what was so bizarre was that I was in
fact making a program with the BBC about consciousness so it was a very timely
phone call to come in and tell you some of my stories, I think
about what science has to say about consciousness
One of the ways of course we think about
consciousness is that we are locked into who we are.
There were many questions that came up, such as you know
What is consciousness?
Is it a consequence of sort of evolution and language, something that
the brain has produced. It's sort of an epiphenomenon, as they say,
a by-product of an evolutionary process
and is it really this, if it exists,
It sounds a crazy thing, we have such a strong sense that we exist
Is it just this thing in our heads?
Well I think that was why theatre was such an interesting
place to explore this because there is a sense that with an audience there is
something more than just the individual consciousnesses of the audience members
and the people on stage, that there's something else beginning to appear there
and that's why I thought it was really interesting to explore that because
I mean actually the science of consciousness...
We still really don't know what it is
but I was interested, when you went to talk to the Mayoruna
and you asked them this question about what they thought about consciousness
it was a very surprising answer
It was very different because I asked the same question of actors,
in fact when we got together, we asked it of scientists
psychotherapists - a very broad spectrum of different people and people would say
you know, well I'm, I sort of feel that my consciousness - I'm somewhere just behind my eyes
you know, I don't have a head because I can't see it
Some people said I'm conscious here - this is where I'm conscious, you know,
When I asked the Mayoruna in the village of Marajai, when I asked them
Where is their consciousness? They pointed to the forest
So I, of course, I realised that I hadn't made myself clear
I said no, in you - where do you sort of identify you?
And they again pointed at the forest. Well I said, well but you know surely you're
looking, I tried to explain it in every different way and then of course I
realized that I was... It was I who was misunderstanding not them
because they didn't feel that their inner worlds were separate from the world around them
You become very aware in the theatre that even when you're on stage, you know
because the play is not theatre, even when you're on stage
that's not theatre
It only exists when the audience is there
and it's the audience and you interacting that makes it
I've sometimes said that the theatre
only exists in the mind of the audience - well in a sense that's not quite true
It's in this communal space between us but one of the things that happens to
people in an audience and why people come to the theatre is that they
suddenly laugh together, they cry together and they realise this thing
that they have inside their heads is existing simultaneously in the minds of everybody else
In other words they cannot be and are not alone