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

from ritual to theater and back 123
of a playwright, has been one of the major developments in its contemporary
theater theory and practice. This development has been
helped by movies and television – by film because it presents dramatic
actions on location, as if in “real life,” and by TV because it brings the
allegedly “real life” of news into the living-room. TV news is staged
not only by the obvious editing of raw footage to suit the video format,
especially the need to sell time in prescribed short units (based on how
long an average viewer’s attention can be held), but also because
“media events” and “camera opportunities” are classes of events created
for TV. Many guerrilla theater events, terrorist acts, kidnappings,
assassinations, and street demonstrations – not to mention more banal
happenings such as press conferences, dedications of public buildings,
parades – are theatricalized in order to catch the TV eye. The idea is to
“get to” large masses of people via TV. The powerful have always had
access to if not control of the media. But TV, being so much more
flexible and instantaneous than print, democratizes by celebrating its
appetite for “news.” Otherwise silent and invisible groups can be seen
and heard if they do something “newsworthy.” Thus these groups gain
in power. In response the authorities make statements, stage reprisals,
and in other ways attempt to terrorize the terrorists. The ordinary
viewer, too often paralyzed by these displays and counter-displays of
force, is called on to choose “right” from “wrong.” Apparently twoperson
exchanges between activist and authority are actually threeperson
interactions, with the invisible spectator being the addressee of
last resort. So are we continually being educated to the histrionics
of communication. 13
At Kurumugl a very similar histrionic sense is present. The men
displaying themselves are out to impress their friends and then later in
the day their enemies. As these people become “technified” (they
already have planes before cars, TV before newspapers), they will leap
not into the twentieth century but beyond, going directly from preindustrial
tribalism to postmodern tribalism. The big difference
between the two is that pre-industrial tribalism scatters power among
large numbers of competing local leaders; postmodern tribalism can
easily become collective, mass, megapolitical. I mean by tribalism the
shaping of social roles not through individual choice but by collective
formation; the substitution of histrionic-ritualized events for ordinary