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

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from ritual to theater and back
political leaders and media bosses. Instead of mirroring the age, performers
were asked to remedy it. The professions taken as models for
theater included medicine and the Church. But no wonder shamanism
is so popular among theater people: shamanism is the branch of
doctoring that is religious and the kind of religion, full of tricks, that
is theatrical. 17
In the 1960s and 1970s efficacy ascended to a dominant position
over entertainment. Although the 1980s have seen an apparent return
to the dominance of entertainment, a little thinking shows this not to
be so. First, certain procedures advanced in the 1960s have become
commonplace: performance events are routinely staged in many
“untheaters,” the preparation and “process” phases of performance are
displayed, very personal stuff is integrated into or shown side by side
with public/fictional materials, etc. Secondly, many performance artists
as well as practitioners of “third” or “alternative” theater draw
directly on shamanistic techniques while involving themselves in, or
creating, community celebrations or other ritual/efficacious events. 18
Paratheatrical events dissolve the audience–performer opposition, 19
while a whole branch of performance art is aimed at eliminating the
“art–life” distinction. 20 Finally, there has been a sea-shift in the perception
of what is “theatrical” – so that political action, conflictual or
aharmonic behavior on both the personal and the “social drama”
levels, role playing in everyday life, emotional training using acting
exercises to help professionals (police, airline personnel, etc.) to deal
with crisis (see Hochschild 1983) are all evidence to the increasingly
complicated interactions between, and continuing convergence of,
theater and ritual.
Figure 4.5 shows how theater history can be given an overall shape
as a development of a braided structure continuously interrelating efficacy
(ritual) and entertainment (theater). At each period in every culture
one or the other is dominant – one is ascending while the other is
descending. Naturally, these changes are part of changes in the overall
social structure of the culture. But performance is not a passive mirror
of these social changes but a part of the complicated feedback process
that creates change. Nor is there an evolutionary “progression” making
today’s theater better than yesterday’s or tomorrow’s better than
today’s. “Better” and “worse” are wholly conventional terms anyway.