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

toward a poetics of performance 177
Figure 5.2 An eruption
Note
An “eruption” features a heated center and a cool rim, with spectators coming and
going. The eruption occurs either after an accident or during an event whose
development is predictable such as an argument, or the construction or demolition
of a building.
accident itself that gathers and keeps an audience. They are held by the
reconstruction or reenactment of the event. In the case of an argument
or, at a much slower pace, the construction of a building watched by
sidewalk superintendents, it is the unfolding of an event which can be
measured against a predictable script (see chapter 3) that gathers and
holds people. Totally unmanageable occurrences – a falling wall, sudden
gunfire – scatters people; only after the wall has fallen or when the
shooting stops does the crowd gather to make the theater.
Eruptions are one kind of “natural” 5 theater, processions are another.
Understood as a coherent system they form a bipolar model of the
performances that took place in the ceremonial centers which arose at
points where Paleolithic hunting bands, moving across the terrain on
their seasonal treks, met. In a procession (see figure 5.3) – which is a