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

toward a poetics of performance 207
We are used to rehearsals for weddings, funerals, and other religious
and civic ceremonies. In every case the rehearsal is a way of selecting
from the possible actions those to be performed, of simplifying these,
making them as clear as possible in regard both to the matrix from
which they have been taken and the audience with which they are
meant to communicate. Along with this primary task the secondary
work of rehearsal is to have each performer perform her/his part with
maximum clarity. Farce is interesting in this regard because it turns
one kind of clarity on its head. Charlie Chaplin staggering drunkenly
across the street is acting “messy” but with consummate skill – just as a
clown performs a graceless pratfall gracefully. The signal sent reads
“graceless” but this signal is sent clearly – i.e. gracefully. Audiences
admire the ease with which great farceurs play at being clumsy. The
same may be said about dissimulation of all kinds so popular in theater:
lies, disguises, double plots, ironies. In every case the performer’s problem
is to be clear about the lie, to be convincing in both aspects of the
situation so that an audience can see around the action and perceive it
and its opposite, text and metatext, simultaneously.
Comparable to rehearsal, but not exactly identical to it, is preparation.
The Aborigines spend many hours preparing for a ten-minute
dance. They carefully lay out all the implements of the dance, they paint
their bodies, they prepare the dancing area. Before each performance
members of The Performance Group took two hours or more warming
up their voices, doing psychophysical exercises, dance steps and yoga,
reviewing difficult bits from the show, etc. The Moscow Art Theater
was famous for the preparation period each actor practiced immediately
before going onto the stage. Every performer I know goes
through a routine before performing. These preparations literally
“compose” the person and the group: they are a kinesic recapitulation
of the rehearsal process allowing for a settling into the special tasks at
hand, a concentration that shrinks the world to the dimensions of the
theater. These preparations are the ritual frame surrounding, setting
off, and protecting the time/space of the theater.
Both rehearsal and preparation employ the same means: repetition,
simplification, exaggeration, rhythmic action, the transformation of
“natural sequences” of behavior into “composed sequences.” These
means comprise the ritual process as understood by ethologists. Thus