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

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from ritual to theater and back
Any ritual can be lifted from its original setting and performed as
theater – just as any everyday life event can be. 26 This is possible
because context and function, and fundamental structure or process,
distinguish ritual, entertainment, and ordinary life from each other.
The differences among them arise from the agreement (conscious or
unexpressed) between performers and spectators. Entertainment/
theater emerges from ritual out of a complex consisting of an audience
separate from the performers, the development of professional performers
and economic needs imposing a situation in which performances
are made to please the audience rather than according to a fixed
code or dogma. It is also possible for a ritual to arise out of theater by
reversing the process just described. This move from theater to ritual
marks Grotowski’s work and that of the Living Theater. But the rituals
created were unstable because they were not attached to, or integrated
into, ongoing social structures outside theater. Also, the differences
among ritual, theater, and ordinary life depend on the degree spectators
and performers attend to efficacy, pleasure, or routine; and how
symbolic meaning and effect are infused and attached to performed
events. In all entertainment there is some efficacy and in all ritual there
is some theater. 27
FROM THEATER TO RITUAL
When in 1973 The Performance Group was working on Brecht’s Mother
Courage most of our rehearsals were open. When the weather permitted
the big overhead front door of the Performing Garage was raised so
that people off the street, students, and friends could drop in to watch
us work. Every rehearsal had from 5 to 40 people attending. The
rehearsals had a feeling of stop and go, with nothing special planned to
accommodate the spectators. Yet their presence made a deep difference:
work on the play began to include a public social core; and the work
became about showing a way of working. This theme was knitted into
the after-opening performances of Courage. The space designed by Jery
Rojo and Jim Clayburgh, collaborating with other members of the
Group, expressed the interplay between Brecht’s drama and the larger
performance in which this drama takes place. Part of the theater was
made into a “green room” wholly visible to the audience. When a