4 from ritual to theater and back: the efficacy ... - AAAARG.ORG

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drama, script, theater, and performance
Structurally, the thovil presents a complicated picture. Entertainment,
ritual, athletics, partying, gambling, and spirit possession are all
mixed. Apparently informal, yet with a special building toward the
trance dance that joins the darkest, stillest hour of night to dawn. What
holds the thovil together is a sequence of punctuations – ritual chants,
further decoration of the performance oval, expected dances and farce
– that keep up the people’s interest. Between these punctuations the
space/time is open, and a variety of events transpire. Men move from
gambling to watching dances to sleep. Alcohol is dispersed; children
play games to the side of the oval and then return for the farces; women
watch, go away to prepare meals or nurse infants, then return. Even the
musicians wander in and out so that sometimes the full orchestra is
playing and sometimes only a single drummer. Only with the
fire-trance dance is everyone focused on a single event.
Drama is tight, verbal narrative; it allows for little improvisation; it
exists as a code independent of any individual transmitter; it is, or can
easily be made into, a written text. A script – which can be either tight
or loose – is either a plan for a traditional event such as the Koratotan
thovil or the Kurumugl pig-kill, or it is developed during rehearsals to
suit a specific text as in orthodox western theater. The theater is the visible/sonic
set of events consisting either of well-known components,
as in Bali, or of a score invented during rehearsal, as in the west. To
some degree the theater is the visible aspect of the script, the exterior
topography of an interior map. Performance is the widest possible
circle of events condensing around theater. The audience is the dominant
element of any performance. Drama, script, theater, and performance
need not all exist for any given event. But when they do, they
enclose one another, overlap, interpenetrate, simultaneously and
redundantly arousing and using every channel of communication. This
kind of behavior characterizes many human activities, from ritual to art.
I began this essay by describing some Paleolithic caves; I indicated that
ancient humans associated themselves with animals, connecting hunting
with the need to replenish the hunted species. A parallel connection
apparently was made between human and animal fertility; and
initiation rites, which are closely associated with human fertility, were
also often totemistic/animist. I now want to return to those themes