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

toward a poetics of performance 179
a roughly similar thing happened countless times on the hunting circuits
of Paleolithic humans. Out of these hunting circuits developed
ritual circuits, meeting places, ceremonial centers, and theaters.
Everywhere theater occurs at special times in special places. Theater
is but one of a complex of performance activities which also includes
rituals, sport and trials (duels, ritual combats, courtroom trials), dance,
music, play, and various performances in everyday life (see chapter 1).
Theater places are maps of the cultures where they exist. That is, theater
is analogical not only in the literary sense – the stories dramas tell, the
convention of explicating action by staging it – but also in the architectonic
sense. Thus, for example, the Athenian theater of the fifth
century bce had as its center the altar of Dionysus. When the chorus
danced around the altar it was located between the audience and the
men who played the dramatic roles. The Greek theater’s semicircular
tiers of seats – not individuated as in modern theaters but curving
communal benches as in modern sports stadiums – literally enfolded
the drama, containing its agons within the Athenian solidarity (see
figure 5.4). Conceptually this pattern of solidarity-containing-agon
was repeated in the contest among the poets and actors for the best play
and best performance. The proscenium theater of the eighteenth to
twentieth centuries in the west also shows a definite, but very different,
sociometric design (figure 5.5).
The Greek amphitheater was open. Beyond and around it the city
could be seen during performances which took place in daylight. It
was the city, the polis, that was tightly boundaried geographically and
ideologically. On the other hand, the proscenium theater is a tightly
boundaried, closed individual building with access from the street
strictly controlled. Within the part of the structure where the performance
takes place and is viewed much effort is spent in directing attention
only to the stage; everything not in the show is hidden or sunk in
darkness. The building, like the events within it, is compartmentalized;
the time for the audience to look at each other is regulated and is
limited to before the show and to intermissions.
The proscenium theater is divided into five precincts (see figure
5.5). Theater workers enter through a backstage door unseen by the
ticket-buying patrons. This is a version of the industrial practice of
separating the factory where goods are produced from the store where