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

ethology and theater 253
agons of pure staccato speech bracketed by the longer rhythms of the
choric odes, is another example of this pattern.
Andrei Serban and Elizabeth Swados in their Fragments of a Trilogy
(1975) – based on Medea, Electra, and The Trojan Women – carried experiments
in phatic language and sounds very far. Serban worked with
Peter Brook and Ted Hughes in the creation of Orghast (1971, see Smith
1972). Orghast was a performance for which Hughes inventedconstructed
a “new language” emphasizing its phatic qualities. In
Orghast words “felt” rather than “meant.” For the Trilogy Serban preferred
not to invent a new language but to work with ancient Greek – a
language neither the performers nor the audience understood. As
Serban said:
The reason we used ancient Greek was to really examine what is hidden
in those sounds – in those particular sounds. What is there is the
potential for a special energy to be acted, to be rediscovered again
after being buried for 2000 years.
(Serban, in Blumenthal 1976: 107–8)
I saw/heard The Trilogy. Language was pulled and screamed, chanted
and pushed up against a wide array of percussive sounds composed
and performed by Swados. Also the vocal range of the performers –
especially Priscilla Smith’s deep gutturals and shrieks – displaced the
ancient Greek, transforming it into a medium of direct phatic communication
between performers and spectators. Whatever the language,
it’s Greek to us so the effect of the performance is of receiving it
“concretely,” as ways of finding sounds that embody the terror of the
tragic actions. The text is used as a tool to dig sound out of the performers.
They do not “interpret” or “read” the text. They do not
“express” it, it extrudes phatic sounds from them.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt points out the relationship between inborn releasing
mechanisms and artistic expression, especially music. Breathing and
heartbeat can be brought into harmony with metronomes or melodies;
drumming raises body temperature.
By the artistic manipulation of the releasing stimuli the composer can
create and dissolve tensions in the listener. The highs and lows of