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

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selective inattention
event is heightened by ignoring the preliminaries. The same thing
happens for preliminary bouts preceding a championship boxing
match. 4) Sometimes the duration of a performance is so long that
it isn’t possible to pay attention throughout; ritual performances
have a program to fulfill and cannot be fit in between supper and
the 11 o’clock news. Performances for accidental audiences are
designed to fit convenient time-slots; ritual performances allow their
audience to demonstrate their devotion by pilgrimages, duration,
and/or ordeals.
SELECTIVE INATTENTION: RITUALIZING
AESTHETIC DRAMA
For the December, 1973 performances of Robert Wilson’s The Life and
Times of Joseph Stalin at the Brooklyn Academy of Music opera house, the
Le Perq space – a room about 150 feet by 80 feet – was set up with
tables, chairs, refreshments: a place where people went not only during
the six 15-minute intermissions but also during the acts of Wilson’s
seven-act opera which began at 7 p.m. and ran more than twelve hours.
I remember coming back to Manhattan at about 8.30 a.m., stopping at
Dave’s Corner at Broadway and Canal to have an early-morning egg
cream: a re-entry ritual into New York’s ordinary life. Each of Stalin’s
seven acts had been performed before, either as part of Wilson’s earlier
works or as independent pieces. Thus the twelve-hour performance in
the opera house was in a sense a retrospective. Most of the people in
the audience had previously seen at least some of Wilson’s work (an
assertion I can’t prove, but looking around the house convinced me):
they assembled at bam to re-experience the work, to try an all-night
performance, to meet again with old friends – using the performance
of Stalin not only as a thing in itself (accidental audience) but as a ritual
experience (integral audience).
The behavior in the Le Perq space was not the same throughout the
night. During the first three acts the space was generally empty except
during intermissions. But as the night went on people came to the
space and stayed there, speaking to friends, taking a break from the
performance, looping out of the opera, later to re-enter. About twothirds
of the audience left bam before the performance was over; but