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

174
toward a poetics of performance
human and ape ceremonial centers none is more decisive than the fact
that only humans permanently transform the space by “writing” on it
or attaching a lore to it. The art in the caves of south-west Europe and
the stories of the Aborigines about the landmarks in their range are
means of transforming natural spaces into cultural places: ways of making
theaters. But every architectural construction or modification is the
making of a cultural place – what is special about a theater?
A theater is a place whose only or main use is to stage or enact
performances. It is my belief that this kind of space, a theater place, did
not arrive late in human cultures (say with the Greeks of the fifth
century bce) but was there from the beginning – is itself one of the
characteristics of our species. The first theaters were ceremonial centers
– part of a system of hunting, following food sources according to a
seasonal schedule, meeting other human bands, celebrating, and marking
the celebration by some kind of writing on a space: an integration
of geography, calendar, social interaction, and the proclivity of people
to transform nature into culture. The first theaters were not merely
“natural spaces” – as is the Bundongo Forest where the chimpanzees
stage their carnivals – but were also, and fundamentally, “cultural
places.” The transformation of space into place means to construct a
theater; this transformation is accomplished by “writing on the space,”
as the cave art of the Paleolithic period demonstrates so well. 1 This
writing need not be visual, it can be oral as with the Aborigines. The
Aborigines are a people with few material possessions but possessing a
culture rich in kinship systems, rites, myths, songs, and dances. With
them the transformation of space into place cannot be seen so much as
it can be heard. Or, similarly but in an environment as different as can
be imagined from the desert home of the Aborigines, the central-
African Mbuti move confidently through their sacred tropical forest
singing and dancing their Molimo (see Turnbull 1962, 1985, 1988).
What characterizes Mbuti Molimo ritual is the sound of the Molimo
wooden trumpet and the pattern of the dances associated with it. The
Molimo, hidden “vertically in a tree near the sacred center of the forest
moves toward the camp, relocating the sacred center as it breathes air,
drinks water, is rubbed with earth, and finally manifests itself over fire.
At this point the sanctity of the forest center envelops the camp”
(Turnbull 1985: 16). Remembering the Aborigines and the Mbuti we