The Role of Human Evolution

Recall those half-naked children in the tale by Borges. Their behavior is so common that the fictional Averroës scarcely acknowledges that they are pretending to be other than who they are as they enact their make-believe scene. But why would they do this? Indeed, why would children around the world regularly engage in that same sort of behavior? And why, no less curiously, would the adults at the Chinese performance reported to the fictional Averroës willingly attend and enjoy the make-believe of that performance, just as adults in the Córdoba of the historical Averroës would have attended and enjoyed performances of make-believe?

There can be no doubt that theatrical behavior expresses itself in ways that are shaped by one or another society. The children in Borges’s tale play at being a minaret, a muezzin who stands atop it while making the call to daily prayers, and a one-boy “congregation of the faithful”;¹ their playing, in other words, is embedded in their Islamic culture. Indeed, the psychologists Sabine Doebel and Angeline S. Lillard suggest that children’s pretend play “may be a key way that … cultural knowledge is rapidly acquired. By freely exploring their environment and the objects and affordances within it, children not only quickly gain rich knowledge about the world …, they also gain cultural knowledge that can then be applied in goal-directed activities.”² “Cultural knowledge” was presumably also acquired by the audiences in the Chinese performance reported to the fictional Averroës. But although societies undoubtedly shape theatrical behavior, that does not imply that the behavior itself is the product of society. One must seek an explanation that accounts for the universality of children’s pretend play – as well as for adults’ willing participation in the make-believe of dramatic theatre, whether as actors or audience members, long after childhood pretending has ceased.

That explanation can begin with the realization, strongly hinted at in many languages, that pretend play and the plays of dramatic theatre are related phenomena. The semantic range of the English word “play” implies that relationship, as do the similar semantic ranges of the French jeu and the German spiel.³ In India, meanwhile, the Marathi term khel “refers to many things – from children’s ‘play,’ to ‘entertainment’ and ‘sport,’ in addition to ‘performance,’” but the term is associated only with human play, for when divinities play, or are the characters in a play, the relevant term is lila.⁴ In various Dravidian languages of southern India, which are linguistically distinct from Marathi or other Indo-Aryan languages, attam has the semantic range to encompass childhood play, games, sports, and dramatic performance.⁵ Similarly, in the Yoruba language (spoken mostly in what is now Nigeria), “the semantic scope of eré … covers drama, theatre, games, singing, chanting, drumming, dancing, miming, acrobatics, storytelling, masquerading, regatta, shows, riddles and jokes,” while in China, the term “xiju was long used for both ‘child’s play’ or ‘game’ and ‘live performance.’”⁶ The evolutionary development of humans, I will argue, has endowed us with the ability to engage in the theatrical behavior that connects the semantically related phenomena of pretend play and theatrical play. The wellspring of theatre can be found in that ability, and it is a wellspring that has continued to flow throughout human history.⁷

There are two main ways that a physical or behavioral characteristic (such as theatrical behavior) might be the product of evolution. The first is that the characteristic is an adaptation, which the evolutionary psychologists David M. Buss et al. define as “an inherited and reliably developing characteristic that came into existence as a feature of a species through natural selection because it helped to directly or indirectly facilitate reproduction during the period of its evolution.”⁸ But not all characteristics (whether physical or behavioral) have an adaptive function, so the second main way a characteristic might arise from evolution is as the by-product of an adaptive characteristic. Buss et al. write, “By-products are characteristics that do not solve adaptive problems and do not have to have functional design. They are carried along with characteristics that do have functional design because they happen to be coupled with those adaptations.” An example of an evolutionary by-product is the whiteness of bones, a color that serves no adaptive purpose but is simply the result of bones being made of calcium.⁹

This is still, however, a bit too simple, for in addition to adaptations and by-products it is now generally accepted that there are also two kinds of exaptations.¹⁰ Buss et al. explain that the first kind are “adaptations that initially arose through natural selection and were subsequently co-opted for another function.” A famous example is the feathers that certain species of dinosaurs evolved, probably to regulate their internal temperature. Feathers, however, also proved very useful for flight, so the evolutionary function of feathers was “co-opted” in some species (and in the birds that descended from them) to serve the different evolutionary function of enabling flight. The second kind of exaptation pertains to “features that did not arise as adaptations through natural selection but rather as [by-products] of adaptive processes and that have [subsequently] been co-opted for a biological function,” thereby becoming adaptations in their own right.¹¹ For example, the sutures in the skulls of young mammals were originally a by-product of the way that bones grow, but that by-product has been co-opted by evolution to aid the birthing process in some abnormally large-headed mammals, including humans. In the first kind of exaptation, then, a new evolutionary function is given to an existing adaptation; in the second kind, a previously nonfunctional by-product gains an evolutionary function.¹²

Whether theatrical behavior is an evolutionary adaptation, a by-product of some such adaptation, or one or the other kind of exaptation, we would be justified in viewing it as an innate characteristic of the human psyche. But any such explanation comes hard against the problem that theatrical behavior would appear, in terms of evolution, to be strikingly counterproductive. The evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides observe that quite a few aspects of human behavior “are puzzling anomalies from an evolutionary perspective” and that “chief among these are [sic] the human attraction to fictional experience (in all media and genres)”; yet “involvement in fictional, imagined worlds appears to be a cross-culturally universal, species-typical phenomenon.”¹³

The nub of the problem is that “organisms should have an appetite for obtaining accurate information, and the distinction between true information or false information should be important in determining whether the information is absorbed or disregarded”; but in fact, humans obviously desire and become deeply immersed in the “‘false information’ of stories, plays, movies, and so on.”¹⁴ An adaptation or exaptation will be passed through generations only if it benefits survival and reproductive success; a by-product will be tolerated only if its costs do not outweigh the benefits of the adaptation from which it is derived. But how can survival and reproductive success benefit when the vitally important “distinction between true information and false information” is compromised? This problem presents itself most immediately in the pretend play of young children, for as the psychologists Caren Walker and Alison Gopnik write: “Children need to learn so much about the real world” if they are to survive. “So why do they spend such a large amount of time and energy engaging with unreal worlds? How could exploring manifestly false worlds improve their understanding of the real one?”¹⁵

One widely accepted definition of this apparently counterproductive pretend play is offered by the psychologists Angeline S. Lillard et al.: “Pretend play activities are the subset of play activities characterized by an ‘as-if’ stance …. Beyond being simply nonliteral, in pretend play a ‘pretense’ is layered over reality …; specifically, a pretender knowingly and intentionally projects some mentally represented alternative onto the present situation in the spirit of play.”¹⁶ These activities typically start before two years of age and develop sequentially through the next four years, beginning with “object substitutions (using an object as if it is something different than what its properties suggest it to be)” and leading eventually to “role enactment” and then “pretense-related metacommunication (planning, negotiation, or role assignments to organize role play into complex scenarios).”¹⁷ Borges’s half-naked children have reached that highest level of pretend play, for Borges tells us the children must negotiate who plays which role, as “they all wanted to be the muezzin.”¹⁸ I have referred to this level of pretend play as theatrical behavior, for these children clearly have the ability to partake in dramatic theatre. But their playing is not yet theatre itself because it has no audience; Averroës alone observes them, but with obvious disinterest in their playing. The natural development of pretend play leads children to the brink of theatre itself, but it awaits an audience to truly be theatre.

Almost all researchers agree that pretend play “is a universal, cross cultural, and central aspect of child development.”¹⁹ As Lillard summarizes: “Pretend play is a signature behavior of early childhood …. Although the frequency and content of pretend play vary across cultures, its occurrence and basic schedule do not. Pretend play occurs even in settings where parents discourage it, although its schedule is slightly delayed.” She goes on to observe that “these two features – a predictable developmental sequence and universality – suggest an evolved behavior.”²⁰ But what adaptive purpose, if any, might the “evolved behavior” of pretend play have served?

Psychologists have not reached a consensus in answering that question. In their extensive review of the experimental literature (as of 2013), Lillard et al. examine evidence that pretend play might be crucial for the development of cognitive aptitudes (specifically, for creativity, intelligence, problem solving, reasoning, and conservation), theory of mind (i.e., the ability to understand that others have their own thoughts), social skills, language/symbolic understanding, narrative skills, and self-regulation. As they judge the evidence, “The causal account is most plausible for language, as pretend play is quite consistently related to it,” but they note that “correlation is not causation, and reverse causality (from language to play) is shown in some studies.” It might well be, these authors suggest, that “the domains” of pretend play and language “are related due to an underlying symbolic function,” in which case they would both be manifestations of that “symbolic function.”²¹

In her solo article, Lillard develops the idea that an advanced capacity for symbolic thinking, per se, is the relevant adaptive characteristic. Newer research, she writes, shows evidence for “a symbolic component underlying pretending itself, language, and specific symbol understanding tasks at 2.5 and 3 years of age [that] predicted social understanding at ages 4 and 5 years”; moreover, “what was key about pretense comprehension for later theory of mind was the symbolic component.”²² The evolutionary value of symbolic thinking is clear enough: The ability to deploy and understand complex symbols (such as words and pictures) greatly expands the human facility to exchange ideas and information, thereby advancing the prospects for survival and reproduction among those who have that ability. In the far-distant past, when symbolic thinking would have been evolving, a family or clan that shared even a rudimentary capacity for complex symbols would have had a distinct evolutionary advantage over those who lacked it. Owing to this advantage, the capacity for advanced symbolic thinking would become dominant in what was then a small and geographically confined human population. By this account, pretend play, language, and theory of mind are all manifestations of an advanced capacity for symbolic thinking. In young children they develop roughly in tandem, with increasing and mutually supportive interactions. Together, they establish the fundamental abilities on which human social life is based.

But let me return to pretend play itself. Its defining characteristic, as we have seen, is its symbolic “‘as-if’ stance” in which “a ‘pretense’ is layered over reality” by a child, “knowingly and intentionally.” Knowledge and intentionality are at the heart of pretend play. The child is aware that what she represents in her play is just a representation. She knows that the banana she uses as a pretend “telephone” is really just a banana, however much she enjoys using it for a pretend “conversation” with a grandparent; likewise, she knows that the mud she shapes into a “chocolate pie” is really just mud, however much she pretends to savor its “taste.”

This understanding of the symbolic “‘as-if’ stance” of pretend play solves the basic conundrum for an evolutionary explanation of pretend play. People (indeed, all sentient organisms) need to be able to distinguish between true and false information, but even when very young, children develop their native ability with symbols to understand pretense as pretense and so can avoid confusing it with reality. The pretense is knowing and intentional, and so while the “telephone” banana might eventually be eaten, the “chocolate pie” mudpie will not.

Precisely how children can distinguish between pretense and reality, especially when someone else is doing the pretending, is a matter of much debate. Behavioralist psychologists argue that pretense is a learned behavior,²³ but many other psychologists hold that children naturally develop their evolved ability to understand the symbolic aspect of pretense. If, as I have suggested with Lillard, the capacity for advanced symbolic thinking is indeed an evolutionary adaptation, one would not need to be taught to think symbolically, any more than one needs to be taught to develop sexual interests during adolescence. Symbolic thinking, including the ability to adopt the “‘as-if’ stance” of pretend play, would develop naturally in children; when confronted with another person engaging in pretense, children would at most need reminding to take the pretense as such. The psychologists Ori Friedman and Alan M. Leslie argue: “The young child possesses the concept pretend by virtue of possessing the requisite neurocognitive mechanisms that deploy the necessary symbolic structures. These mechanisms allow other systems to plan and undertake actions under the description I pretend P, and empower the child to recognize that someone else is pretending P.”²⁴

From early childhood we develop our natural ability to engage in pretense ourselves and (as pretend play develops) to understand it in others. The knowing and intentional “‘as-if’ stance” of pretend play allows children to “decouple” pretense from reality so that reality is “quarantined” from any possible confusion with the pretense of play. The winks, knowing looks, and exaggerated movements often associated with pretend play are not teaching children to behave as if something were real; they simply remind children to decouple the pretense from reality and to understand it as symbolic. Decoupling markers, argue Friedman and Leslie, serve to communicate “that one is ‘only’ pretending. At the same time, [these markers] further the communicative aim by drawing attention to what is being pretended.”²⁵

Decoupling markers of one sort or another are common not only in childhood pretend play but in the performance of all sorts of fictional narratives. In storytelling around the world, decoupling markers include well-established opening formulae such as the “Once upon a time …” that sets fairytales in a make-believe world. Decoupling markers are also ubiquitous in dramatic theatre and include fantastical makeup, as in kathakali; carefully delineated playing areas, such as the circle of sanctified oil inscribed on the ground for bhavai; clear indicators of the fictionality of the performance, such as the holding of scripts along with the onstage presence of the director in taʽziyeh; and the nonliteral uses of props, such as a whip held in a certain way to symbolize the presence of a horse, as in many Chinese theatre forms. Even the most realistic performances of European spoken theatre have conventional decoupling markers, most typically a dimming of the houselights and/or a rising curtain at the start of the show. In all forms of dramatic theatre, that is to say, reality is quarantined from the pretend world of the play, however much that play might engage with or mimic the affairs of the real world.

I should also point out, though, that quarantining occasionally fails. Children might respond to scary pretend play (involving, say, a monster attack) with true fright. This does not mean they are generally susceptible to quarantine failure, “but because physiological reactions to real and imagined scary events are similar … children might interpret the physiological signs of fear as a cue to reality,” not realizing “that the source of fear is purely their own imagination.”²⁶ Quarantine failures are similarly possible in theatre. Audience members might interpret their own physiological responses to powerful emotions such as fear, anger, or lust “as a cue to reality,” overriding whatever decoupling markers have been put in place. It is presumably rare for audience members to forget entirely that they are watching a play, but the emotions inspired by the play can surely be powerful emotions.

Bringing in the Audience

Childhood pretend play, having attained its full development when a child is around six years old, typically draws to a close at around eleven years of age;²⁷ the ability to engage in pretense is by then well developed, along with the related symbolic abilities of using language and applying theory of mind. All three are subsequently carried into adulthood and put to more adult purposes. Our ability to “respond deeply and passionately” to fiction of all sorts, suggests the psychologist Henry M. Wellman (writing with Karen Lind), is an “extension of our childhood powers of imaginary play.”²⁸ But even sophisticated pretend play, such as that engaged in by the children whom Averroës casually observes, falls short of dramatic theatre, per se. The fundamental difference is that while the make-believe of pretend play is restricted to the players themselves, the make-believe of theatre is directed to an audience and is an intentional artistic communication between the performers and their audience. Paul Hernadi refers to audiences as participating in a “co-creation”: Theatre is a “transaction [that] should be viewed not so much as production leading to consumption, but as seduction leading to consummation – to gratifying intercourse with someone else’s imagination.”²⁹

Kendall L. Walton, a philosopher of aesthetics, offers an influential account of how audiences become active participants in fictional narratives (such as dramatic theatre and storytelling) as well as in other kinds of representational art. Walton writes: “What all representations have in common is a role in make-believe.”³⁰ His central point is that those who make representations, including the performers of a show, are playing a complex sort of “game” in which they “make-believe” a fiction, just as the children do in Borges’s tale. The basic role of audience members “consists, in a word, in participating in [that] game of make-believe” by using the performance as “a prop” for their own imaginative involvement in it.³¹ Audience members “don’t just observe fictional worlds from without” but imaginatively “live in them” with the fictional characters, “sharing their joys and sorrows, rejoicing and commiserating with them, admiring and detesting them. True, the worlds are merely fictional, and we are well aware that they are, but from inside they seem actual.” Our imaginative participation in these worlds “gives us a sense of intimacy with characters and their other contents. It is this experience that underlies much of the fascination representations have for us and their power over us.”³² But while imaginative participation is central for an audience member, one must also recognize that “his perspective is a dual one. He observes fictional worlds as well as living in them; he discovers what is fictional as well as fictionally learning about and responding to characters and their situations.”³³ Imaginative participation in make-believe, in other words, does not necessitate that audience members lose their sense of reality: Unless there is a failure of quarantining, audiences know they are imaginatively participating in what amounts to a game of make-believe.³⁴

Every such game, Walton argues, requires establishing “a fictional truth …, a prescription or mandate in some context to imagine something.” These “truths” are “proposition[s] that are to be imagined” if one is to participate in the game.³⁵ The “fictional truths” in childhood pretend play are the implicit or explicit rules of the game in which the players are engaged. Dramatic theatre proposes the same sort of “fictional truths,” but its “truths” bind not only the players but also the audience that chooses to play along with them. According to Walton, “a minimal condition” for the audience’s imaginative participation is that they “consider the rules or principles of generation to apply to themselves”; conversely, mere onlookers (such as Borges’s Averroës) do not accept the “fictional truths” of the make-believe and so cannot enter imaginatively into it.³⁶ The fundamental fictional truth for the audience of a theatrical performance is that the action being performed has a spurious reality, although everyone involved knows it is distinct from reality. Beyond that, theatre’s fictional truths are governed both by the theatre form of the show and by the individual show itself. Theatre forms such as China’s jingju, Japan’s kabuki, and the British Mummers’ Play, among many others, traditionally called for the men playing female roles to be fictionally accepted as women; other forms require the converse, as with the “trouser roles” (male roles performed by women) in European opera and otokoyaku (literally, “male roles”) in the all-female Takarazuka theatre companies of contemporary Japan.³⁷ Similarly, in many theatre forms it must be accepted as perfectly normal for characters to “speak” in sung monologues, dialogues, and choruses, even though they are not “singing” within the fiction. Such outbursts of non-diegetic song would be shockingly inappropriate if they were to occur in certain other forms, such as European spoken theatre.

Fictional truths are also created by individual shows, whether on a textual or performative basis. Peter Pan and Sweeney Todd are both American musicals set in London, but while the make-believe of Peter Pan contains the fictional truth that some of its characters can fly, such flight would grossly violate the fictional truth of Sweeney Todd. In terms of performance, the fictional truth of a show might require its audience to imagine that a particular character is young and attractive, even if the actor playing that character is in fact middle-aged and dumpy. If audience members are unable to accept these fictional truths, their imaginative participation in the make-believe inevitably falters.

The fictional truths required by childhood pretend play and dramatic theatre make it possible for them to present counterfactual “realities”: The “‘as-if’ stance” becomes sufficiently well-developed to present what-if scenarios that contemplate how events might follow from certain premises. Consider a child with her doll, thinking “If I were mommy, this is how I would treat my baby.” Walker and Gopnik propose that pretend play “enables children to exercise the cognitive abilities that are necessary for counterfactual reasoning – setting false premises … and following the effects of [these] counterfactual premise[s] downstream.” They contend that “the very act of engaging in pretend play promotes the development of causal learning” by giving “children a chance to practice and perfect the distinctive cognitive operations involved in counterfactual thinking.” Walker and Gopnik stop short of suggesting that the development of causal learning is the basic evolutionary function of pretend play but hold that imagining counterfactuals is critical to children’s development of causal thinking.³⁸

Something very interesting occurs when we bring in an adult audience that is not engaged in creating the counterfactual scenario of the play – but presumably is perfectly capable of understanding causation and therefore has little need to practice it. Why would adults want to imaginatively participate in the make-believe of others, taking pleasure even when the enactment might be deeply tragic or unsettling? Pleasure, after all, is an evolved response that motivates an organism to act in ways that enhance its prospects for survival and reproduction. Why would attending theatre be inherently pleasurable for adults?³⁹

A good part of that pleasure might derive from continuing to exercise the capacity for symbolic pretense first expressed in childhood play; as such, it would be a lingering by-product that serves no adaptive function but is not so costly in an evolutionary sense as to present a problem. It is also possible, however, that adult engagement with counterfactuals does indeed serve an adaptive function. It might, in other words, be an exaptation, in which our evolved ability to engage in the symbolic expression of childhood pretend play has been co-opted for a new function.

It is not hard to imagine what this function might be, although it is no more than a hypothesis at this point. Steven Pinker suggests that the ability to engage with fiction (including dramatic theatre) might well serve an adaptive function because fictions “supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them.”⁴⁰ This suggestion is notable because Pinker also argues that the arts in general are “biologically functionless activities” that are mere by-products of the evolved mind.⁴¹ Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, an evolutionary psychologist, makes the related argument that fiction (again, including dramatic theatre) offers “the representation of problems humans encounter in their lives and the constraints individuals struggle against in the efforts to solve them.” In this way it “offers a low-cost, readily available means of amplifying our social experience by enabling us to witness a variety of adaptively momentous moments … from multiple perspectives.”⁴²

This line of reasoning suggests that the counterfactual aspect of symbolic pretend play has been co-opted for a new adaptive function: By adding an audience, the make-believe scenarios of pretend play gain a social value. Making a point especially relevant to theatre, the literary scholar Joseph Carroll contends that stories are “indispensable … for the organization of shared experience that makes cultural collective life possible.”⁴³ It is by no means coincidental, Carroll observes, that “there is a fundamental parallel between the structure of human motivations and concerns and the organizing principles of literary representation,” with our fictional characters motivated by such basic human concerns as survival, mating and reproduction, parenting and kinship, social interactions, and relations with supernatural power.⁴⁴ We create counterfactuals about the issues that matter to us – and these counterfactuals are so useful for our survival and reproductive success that we have evolved an appetite to continue participating in them, whether as their creators or as their audiences, even after childhood play has ceased. But for counterfactuals to be effective, Carroll writes, they “must be emotionally saturated [and] imaginatively vivid.”⁴⁵ Dramatic theatre does not simply lay out its counterfactual narratives for thoughtful contemplation; it presents them in a way that is pleasurable enough to stimulate our desire for them and to focus our attention on them.

According to an analysis of “the theatrical event” by Jacqueline Martin and Willmar Sauter, dramatic theatre involves three kinds of communication between audiences and actors that provide this sense of pleasure. The first kind is between the audience and the actors-as-fellow humans, to whom the audience responds with varying degrees of affection, expectation, and recognition.⁴⁶ In kabuki, such responses are formalized in the practice of kakegoe: “Words of praise shouted impromptu by playgoers when stimulated by a fine piece of acting … or to encourage an actor on his entrance.”⁴⁷ In many other forms, the first appearance of a beloved actor will unleash a round of applause that has nothing to do with the fictional action itself. By offering themselves as people whom others are allowed to unguardedly examine, actors can exert a strong sense of personal presence that attracts the attention of the audience and offers an immediate human connection with them.

The second kind of communication is between the audience and the actors-as-artists. The actors are expected to know the appropriate artistic conventions of their theatre form and to perform them effectively; in return, the audience is expected to understand those conventions and judge the artistry with which they are deployed.⁴⁸ What counts as “good singing” differs greatly between theatre forms, but when the audience for a play in a given form hears what it considers an excellent voice, the artistic impact is at the very least pleasing, and can be quite riveting. But there can be no such impact when artistry and audience expectations are mismatched. A witness to a late nineteenth-century performance of Italian opera in Japan commented that after the Japanese audience members “had recovered from the first shock of surprise [they] were seized with a wild fit of hilarity at the high notes of the prima donna,” laughing “at the absurdities of European singing till their sides shook and the tears rolled down their faces.”⁴⁹ There was nothing wrong with either the singers or the audience, but the mismatch of artistry and expectations undermined the artistic communication, making the performance memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The third kind of communication identified by Martin and Souter is between the audience and the actors-as-fictional-characters.⁵⁰ This is the kind of communication with which Walton is most concerned in his analysis of the make-believe in representational arts, as when he writes of the audience sharing the characters’ “joys and sorrows, rejoicing and commiserating with them, admiring and detesting them.”⁵¹ There is an intellectual component to this sort of communication (as the audience tries to understand the plot), just as there is an interpretive component (as it tries to understand the motives of a complex character) and an evaluative component (as it contemplates whether a play’s fiction is plausible or well-plotted). But fundamentally, this third kind of communication is predicated on the empathy that the audience feels for one or more of the characters. Without that empathy, audiences might well not care enough to sort out a plot, develop an interpretation, or render an evaluation. Empathy motivates the audience’s imaginative engagement with the characters of dramatic theatre, giving it a personal stake in the play’s make-believe “reality.”

Although the word empathy can be used in multiple ways, the most common usage refers to the ability to take another’s perspective – or, more colloquially, to put oneself in another’s shoes. This common usage, however, lacks psychological nuance, for it fails to consider why a person might empathize with some fictional characters (or, for that matter, with some people in real life) but not with others or why that empathy might shift between characters as a play progresses. It seems, however, that we are inclined to empathize especially with characters with whom we believe we share an identity (e.g., gender, race, social status, or nationality), situational characteristic (e.g., a difficult childhood, a desire for revenge, or the vicissitudes of old age), mood or disposition (e.g., happiness, depression, or rebelliousness), or some other personal trait, belief, or desire. If this is indeed the case, then characters attract our empathy less because we place ourselves in their situation than because we recognize at least something of ourselves in them.⁵² The difference between these two perspectives might seem subtle. Consider, though, how often we come across a character with whom we think we should empathize (if only because the play centers around that character) but cannot bring ourselves to care about because the character seems alien to us. But when audience members see meaningful aspects of themselves in a play’s characters, they are most compellingly drawn into the play’s imaginary world.

In sum, then, dramatic theatre is not merely the presentation of counterfactual “what-if” scenarios. Taking advantage of the audience–actor communications associated with presence, artistry, and empathy, theatre’s counterfactuals are rendered pleasurable in multiple ways to stimulate our desire for them and focus our attention on them. The same can be said of storytelling – and although the artistic devices available to it are more limited (including its typical reliance on a single performer), these limitations allow it to be presented at little cost almost anywhere. But whether in dramatic theatre or storytelling, the performance of these counterfactual scenarios might well be an exaptation that serves the evolutionary function of preparing people for the seemingly limitless range of contingencies they might confront in the real world.

We have come a long way from childhood pretend play. Such play, as we have seen, is likely associated with an evolutionary adaptation for advanced symbolic thinking. Dramatic theatre might merely be a by-product of pretend play, carried over into adult life, but it might be an exaptation in which the childhood development of pretense has been co-opted for a new evolutionary purpose. At this point, psychological research does not firmly justify making that claim. But one way or the other, the evidence suggests that the wellspring of theatre is childhood pretend play, a universal human phenomenon that leaves us all capable of theatrical behavior, whether as performers who enact make-believe “realities” or as audience members who imaginatively engage in the make-believe of others. Throughout human history and around the world, theatre has allowed performers and audiences to explore “what-if” situations in ways that compel attention through presence, artistry, and empathy.

There remains the question of when advanced symbolic thinking (and, by implication, pretend play, theatrical behavior, and perhaps the earliest dramatic theatre) evolved in humans. No sure answer can be given because ongoing archaeological and genetic research continually modifies or overturns previously accepted chronologies. But it is possible to gain a sense of the latest possible time by which symbolic thinking had evolved to the point of being essentially the same as ours.

The hominin lineage that would come to include Homo sapiens dates back more than a million years and it is now usually accepted that what are called “anatomically modern humans” had evolved by about 200,000 years ago.⁵³ This evolution took place in East Africa, with some dispersals perhaps 100,000 years ago to other parts of Africa as well as into Eurasia. But it was only between about 70,000 and 50,000 years ago that humans began an expansion that would eventually take their descendants throughout the world in what the archeologist Clive Gamble calls “one breathless rush.”⁵⁴ Some scholars argue that this expansion was the result of a revolutionary genetic change that enabled advanced symbolic thinking, but this argument is no longer widely accepted. Gamble writes, “Instead of a human revolution, we see a long drawn-out affair” that stretched back hundreds of thousands of years into the prehuman past.⁵⁵ The paleoanthropologists Julia Galway‐Witham, James Cole, and Chris Stringer concur, suggesting that it is now “clear that the origins of complex modern human behaviours associated with H. sapiens originated as an older, more gradual behavioural package [deep in the hominin lineage] in Africa.”⁵⁶

Whether the relevant genetic changes were a uniquely human revolution or part of “a long drawn-out affair” that became especially advanced in humans, it is generally accepted that “fully modern [human] behaviour [is] detectable in the archeological record beginning 50,000–40,000 years ago.” Notably, this evidence includes the “earliest appearance of incontrovertible art,” as well as the “earliest secure evidence for ceremony or ritual, expressed both in art and in relatively elaborate graves.”⁵⁷ The clear implication is that by this time, the humans who were spreading out across the world already had a well-developed capacity for symbolic thinking – and with it, the symbolic behavior of pretend play. It seems reasonable to suggest, therefore, that theatre’s origin can plausibly be said to be carried within all of us. The unceasingly renewed variety of theatrical expression around the world is the direct result of that origin.