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

magnitudes of performance 325
never get beyond crisis and failed redressive action. Media encourages
these large-scale dramas to be viewed with varying degrees of anxiety
and amusement by hundreds of millions of people. A “Rashomon
effect” 21 occurs where the same data are woven into many different
narratives according to cultural bias, editing, and individual interpretation
– and these become parts of a Geertzian interpretation of cultures
by different cultures.
The work for performance theorists now is to correlate a number
of performance magnitudes identifying the transformational
systems operating among them. Let me suggest seven “performance
magnitudes” whose interconnectedness ought to be explored:
1 Brain event: the neurological processes linking cortical to subcortical
actions; ANS; the ergotropic–trophotropic system.
Ekman’s recent work, the speculations of d’Aquili and Lex.
Turner’s last investigations concerned these processes (1983).
“Deep acting” works on this level as well as on levels 2 and 3.
2 Microbit: seen only with the help of the slow-motion or stopaction
camera. What Birdwhistell says delimits the kinemic
vocabularies of discrete cultures.
3 Bit: the smallest unit of consciously controllable repeatable
behavior. Ekman composes his subjects’ faces bit by bit in order to
affect their ANS at the brain event level. Directors and choreographers
often work bit by bit, especially if they wish to compose
images without interference by the performers’ intentions.
4 Sign: composed of one or more bits and readable as an emotion, a
piece of discrete information. Ekman claims that certain facial displays
are universal signs. Ordinarily theater and dance deal with
events at the sign, scene, or drama levels. It is at these levels that
spectators consciously receive performances.
5 Scene: a sequence of one or more signs that make up a whole unit
of interaction. Goffman studied these. Narrative structures are
visible at this level.
6 Drama: a complex, multiplex system of scenes ranging from aesthetic
dramas to Balinese cockfights to initiations to long cycle
plays such as the Ramlila or the Yaqui Easter Passion play. Geertz
and Turner have analyzed these from a narrative point of view.