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

drama, script, theater, and performance 103
small-scale play, the expression of individual opinions and tastes. The
impulse toward collectivity, groupness, identification with others leads
toward theater and performance; the impulse toward individuality,
personal assertiveness, and confrontation between individuals leads
toward drama. In certain periods – such as the heydays of Greek and
Elizabethan theater drama – a palpable tension was felt between two
contradictory modes. In the Greek, the tension was between the shamanistic
and collective modes of celebration represented directly in the
satyr plays, the Eleusinian mysteries, and other Orphic ceremonies and
a newly emerging rationalism and individuality. In the Elizabethan era,
the tension arose between the variety of medieval collectives (guilds,
feudalism, Catholicism) and a surging Renaissance spirit of rationalism
and individuality (self, cities, Protestantism). I won’t elaborate these
theories here. But studies of non-human primate behavior is not
incidental to understanding patterns of human culture.
I want to say a few words in favor of another theory of the function
of play. It is not a new theory, and my contribution to it is to connect it
to the whole field of performance. I believe play is what organizes
performance, makes it comprehensible. If the distinction I made earlier
between play and ritualized behavior is kept in mind, then clearly play
belongs mainly to carnivorous and omnivorous species: hunters. It
belongs to species that depend on other species for life, who stalk,
attack, and kill prey. Furthermore, not only among lions, but also with
chimps and certainly with humans, hunting is group activity. Goodall
says of chimp hunting that
sometimes it appears that the capture of a prey is almost accidental.
. . . On other occasions the hunting seems to be a much more deliberate,
purposeful activity, and often at such times the different individuals
of a chimpanzee group show quite remarkable cooperation – as when
different chimpanzees station themselves at the bases of trees offering
escape routes to a cornered victim.
(Goodall 1972: 205)
Hunting demands not only cooperation but sudden bursts (climaxes)
of energy balanced against extended periods of stealth. That,
and a great deal of practice. This is where play comes in – especially