Reflection:
After you read the PDF document attached “A Concise Introduction to Ritual” discuss in a reflection response the importance of ritual and ceremony in your everyday life (whether religious, social, or common everyday) and what, if any, performative or theatrical elements these ceremonies have.
When reflecting think of the importance of these ceremonies and rituals and how they might mirror the ideas in the reading/video and how they might differ. Ultimately, reflecting on the question of how our ceremonies and rituals are theatrical and what has theatre taken from these ceremonies and rituals and applied to the art form.
250 to 300 words.
DT+ FUNDAMENTALS
A Concise Introduction to:
Ritual
Ben Spatz
University of Huddersfield
INTRODUCTION
When we talk about ritual in theatre, or ritual theatre, we draw on a
complicated history of thinking about the relationship between the two.
Does ritual come before theatre? If it does, then why do so many theatre
artists dream of transforming theatre back into ritual? For some artists,
ritual suggests a moment of great intensity. But ritual can also refer to
mundane activities like shaking hands or brushing your teeth. The two
senses of repetition – dull, mechanical habit and sacred, heightened
action – give the idea of ritual theatre two edges. This short essay
explores both dimensions of ritual and their application to theatre and
performance.
Last update: 11/02/2019
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HISTORY
Many 20th-century theatre artists took inspiration from stories told in the
academic field anthropology, which has traditionally studied so-called
‘primitive’ peoples who lived without advanced technologies and often
without writing. As part of their research, anthropologists often spend
months or even years living with a specific group of people and then write
about their lives, including their rituals. Artists living in technologically
advanced societies and in densely populated cities have different reasons
for being inspired by these accounts. Choreographer and anthropologist
Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) travelled throughout the Caribbean
studying the folklore, dance forms, and rituals of Black culture there. She
drew on these sources to create her own works of dance theatre in the
1930s. Since then many African-American choreographers and theatre
artists, from Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) to Ralph Lemon (1952- ), have drawn on
folk and ritual sources in the creation of theatrical dance works. In this case,
ritual is seen as an authentic expression of a culture which can be shared
more widely when it is turned into theatre.
White American and European artists in the 1960s and 1970s also took
inspiration from anthropological sources. They less often conducted their
own anthropological research and were not usually focused on the rituals
of a particular culture. Instead, these artists tried to create a new kind of
ritual that they felt was lacking in modern culture. The idea that modern
society is alienated and that rituals could be part of its healing was
widespread in the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Theatre artists and
companies of that period, such as the Performance Group directed by
Richard Schechner (1934- ), the Living Theatre directed by Judith Malina
(1926-2015) and Julian Beck (1925-1985), and the experimental dance
practices led by Anna Halprin (1920- ), attempted to create theatrical events
that might serve this purpose. English director Peter Brook (1925-)
describes ritual theatre or ‘holy theatre’ in his 1968 book The Empty Space.
Brook describes modern theatre as searching largely in vain for the lost
power of ritual and refers to the Polish theatre directed by Jerzy Grotowski
(1933-1999) as one of the few in which the possibility of a genuine ritual or
experience of the sacred could still occur.
Today the idea that theatre can create healing rituals for society is less
widely accepted. Although some artists still think of their work as
therapeutic, there is also scepticism about the effectiveness of theatre to
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heal and about the relevance of ritual to theatre. In addition,
anthropologists have become aware that the way they studied and
analysed non-Western cultures was problematic. Although they often
indicated respect for the cultures they studied, anthropology as an
academic field contributed to negative stereotypes about non-western
cultures and to the historical and ongoing violence of colonialism. Even
when those stereotypes are positive – when other cultures are
‘romanticised’ as being more noble or pure than Europeans – they are part
of a fantasy of otherness that denies full humanity to those who are studied
as examples of primitive life. Despite these problems, the word ritual is still
commonly used by theatre artists in several different ways.
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THEORY
In The Birth of Tragedy (1872), German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900) describes the evolution of ancient Greek tragic drama out of
earlier Dionysian rites. According to the well-established story of European
theatre, Medieval drama was also born out of ritual, as a bit of spoken
dialogue in the Catholic Easter service was gradually transformed into full-
scale religious plays. In both of these stories, theatre is seen as a modern
or mature development of primitive ritual. When ritual stops being purely
religious and begins to create artistic works – so the story goes – theatre
is born. However, the reality is more complicated. Theatre and ritual are
interwoven. Sometimes ritual does gradually transform into theatre, but
theatre can also give rise to ritual. All theatre, even the most commercial,
can be analysed as ritual. After all, what are ticket booths, plush seats, red
curtains, and dimming lights if not elements of an elaborate ritual? On the
other hand, ritual can be analysed as a kind of theatre. Above all, there is
no reason to treat ritual as if it were in the past. Both theatre and ritual or
undeniably in the present, and both have histories.
In a famous 1956 article, Horace Miner described ‘Body Ritual among the
Nacirema’ people. He describes the Nacirema’s bizarre “magical beliefs
and practices” in detail and concludes that it is “hard to see” how such
“exotic customs” could have acquired meaning. At some point, the reader
realises that Nacirema is just American spelt backwards and that the
“unusual” rituals described in by Miner are commonplace North American
routines such as brushing one’s teeth or receiving a vaccine. The first point
made by this article is that familiar practices can be made to seem strange
when described from an external perspective. An action that seems
completely reasonable and intelligent to one person may look like a
strange ritual to someone who is not part of the same cultural context. The
second, more difficult point is that treating someone’s actions as exotic
creates a difference in status or power. In the article, Miner does not merely
describe the Nacirema’s rituals and respectfully wonder about their aims.
Instead, he describes them as foolish and misguided, contrasting them to
what ‘we’ now know about reality. Once the reader realises that the
Nacirema are American, it becomes clear that this is a parody of how
European and North American anthropologists have disrespectfully
described the rituals of other cultures.
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To analyse the 1960s avant-garde theatres mentioned above, many
theatre scholars drew on anthropologist Arnold van Gennep’s 1909 book
Rites of Passage. Drawing on examples from Africa, van Gennep described
how a rite of passage such as that which turns a girl into a woman or a boy
into a man involves three stages, which we can call: separation,
transformation, and reintegration. First, the person is separated from
everyday social life. Then they undergo a period of very different and
especially intense activity in which their identity is transformed. Finally, they
are reintegrated back into social life, now with their new identity. A later
anthropologist, Victor Turner, along with theatre artist and scholar Richard
Schechner, used this theory to compare theatre and ritual. They suggested
that modern experimental theatre is less fully transformative than
traditional rites of passage because it does not involve the whole society
and because participation in it is voluntary. Turner described genuine,
culturally grounded rites of passages as ‘liminal’, meaning that they bring
participants all the way into a transitional or in-between state of being. In
contrast, he said, the kinds of events we experience in urban, multicultural
societies – even those that push the boundaries of participation, like
Grotowski’s para-theatrical experiment – are merely ‘liminoid’, having
some but not all features of liminal rites of passage.
Today, there are many definitions of ritual, and debates still continue about
how the word should be used. Ritual is often linked to religion, but we can
also talk about secular or non-religious ritual. Ritual is often associated with
intense and transformative experiences, including ‘trance’ experiences,
but it can also refer to meaningless daily habits. Some scholars have even
argued that ritual is, by definition, meaningless action which only has
meaning because of the social life around it. Ritual studies is most often
part of religious studies, but as we have seen, it overlaps with
anthropology, sociology, theatre, and other fields. Many theories of ritual
have been proposed but all of them have also been questioned, especially
when it comes to applying the term cross-culturally. Probably the most
recent major change in the theory of ritual is linked to the development of
cognitive studies, which theorises the relationship between the mind and
the body in light of new technological advances. One idea, suggested by
Tamar Frankiel, is that ritual effectively reminds us – on a visceral, physical
level – of the most basic cognitive structures of human life: relationships
like UP/DOWN, INSIDE/OUTSIDE, or CENTRE/PERIPHERY, which
philosopher Mark Johnson calls “image schemata”. Other cognitive
scientists have attempted to measure the brain waves, changes in heart
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rate, and other biological markers that indicate meditation, trance, or other
altered states. Cognitive studies continue to develop rapidly and seem
likely to bring additional insights to our understanding of ritual.
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PRACTICE
Many of the strategies which were associated with ritual theatre during that
period continue to inform theatre in the 21st century, even if the word ‘ritual’
is not used in the same way. One of Grotowski’s early innovations was to
include the audience in the physical space of the performance rather than
separating them with an invisible ‘fourth wall’. Schechner borrowed this
idea and called it environmental staging. Environmental staging may or
may not also involve audience participation, where guests are invited to
contribute to the performance as it unfolds. These ideas are being pushed
further today in the genre of immersive theatre, where the audience enters
into an entirely constructed physical space such as a building with many
rooms.
Grotowski also stated that it is difficult to give audiences a truly
transformative experience in a culture where there are no universally
shared myths. Everybody has heard of the ancient Greek gods today, but
referring to Zeus or Apollo no longer carries religious force. On the other
hand, contemporary religious rituals are sources of major political debate
today. Gay marriage, the wearing of Islamic hijab, and the circumcision of
male infants are all rituals which are currently under debate in European
and North American societies. It is tempting to think that life would be
easier or more fulfilling if society had more shared myths and rituals.
Political protest marches do bring large numbers of people together and
use rituals like chanting and marching to articulate common goals and
shared identities. On the other hand, when a whole society seems to speak
in a single voice, that is usually not because everyone agrees but because
a powerful government compels everyone to participate in its rituals. Even
apparently positive, non-religious, non-political rituals like the Olympics
have negative aspects, as the cities where they take place are sometimes
harmed rather than helped by having so many foreign visitors come and
go in such a short time.
To avoid the risks of group rituals, some theatre artists explore the
possibility of enacting individual rituals in public. The performer in a work
of performance art / live art may invoke the idea of ritual by working with
nudity or with bodily fluids. Performance artists Marina Abramovic (1946- )
and Tehching Hsieh (1950- ) have made works that emphasise their own
physical vulnerability. Autobiographical stories and personal revelations,
on the other hand, may produce a different kind of psychological,
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emotional, or social vulnerability. Performance artists often also push the
boundaries of duration by doing performances that last for many hours or
even for weeks, months, or years. Durational performances always
become rituals because of the way they interact with time, bringing the
performer and witnesses into contact with daily and seasonal rhythms
which are excluded within traditional proscenium and ‘black box’ theatre.
Another strategy being used by contemporary artists is an engagement
with place through site-specific performances that take place in natural
settings like forests and coasts. Here again, theatre may cross over into
ritual as it comes into contact with large forces of nature like the ocean.
But perhaps the most common way in which contemporary theatre
continues to produce ritual is in community-based or Applied Theatre and
dramatherapy. In these situations, ritual does not need to involve highly
intensive elements such as bodily fluids, long durations, or powerful site-
specific environments. Instead, it simply indicates that the primary aim of a
performance is to effect some kind of transformation, no matter how
modest, in the performer and their witnesses. When theatre is created in a
refugee camp, in a prison, or in a hospital, there may be a sense that the
act of performance contains its own self-sufficient meaning, without
depending on any understanding from the outside world. This, in a simple
way, is both theatre and ritual.
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FURTHER READING
Bell, C. (1992). Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Boal, A. (1992). Games for Actors and Non-actors. London: Routledge.
Brook, P. (2008). The Empty Space. London: Penguin.
Landy, R. (1996). Persona and Performance: The Meaning of Role in Drama,
Therapy, and Everyday Life. New York: Guilford Publications.
Schechner, R. (1995). The Future of Ritual. London: Routledge.
Schechner, R. (2003). Performance Theory. London: Routledge.
Turner, V. (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play.
New York: PAJ Publications.