New Millennium, Community Theater and Audience
New Millennium, Community Theatre & Audience by Jane Shannahan (BA; PGDips Bus & Admin/Event Management; MMgt)
Introduction
“Primitive rituals were the first form of drama” (Barba & Sanzenbach, 1965, p. 154). Primitive theatre could be termed religious as the main aim was to conjure the gods for a variety of practical reasons, e.g. warding off disease. Early societies put value on the repetition of traditions and folklore that were handed down verbally and visually, manifest over time via movement/dance, sound/music, masks, and the taking on of characters. It has been suggested that early Indo-European societies related to a holy triumvirate comprising “a supreme god, a warrior god, and a civil god” (Dumézil, 1968, 1971, 1973, cited in Qiuyu et al., 1989, p. 15). So ritual theatre and religion were intricately bound up with each other and covered all facets of life over diverse regions. The dramas would generally be led by proscribed individuals, e.g. shamans, but all the tribes-people took part and had a part to play. We can know something about ancient rituals because some remain: “even today, one can see numerous forms of "primitive theatre … ancient forms closely connected with religious ritual that have been preserved in certain remote regions as living fossils, essentially unchanged by modern civilization” (Qiuyu et al., 1989, p. 12).
Intrinsic to the original notion of (ritual as) theatre is its two-way operation in that the audience were as significant as the performers, and today, without an audience, a performance is not theatre. Where once the drama might take place, geographically speaking, anywhere in the community and environs, modern drama came to be performed in a specified place: the theatre. With the advent of the raked stage, elaborate true-to-life sets, the proscenium arch, technical wizardry, and the darkened auditorium, the spectators became steadily segregated from the ‘action’ (Kershaw, 2003). The curtain was there to
Introduction
“Primitive rituals were the first form of drama” (Barba & Sanzenbach, 1965, p. 154). Primitive theatre could be termed religious as the main aim was to conjure the gods for a variety of practical reasons, e.g. warding off disease. Early societies put value on the repetition of traditions and folklore that were handed down verbally and visually, manifest over time via movement/dance, sound/music, masks, and the taking on of characters. It has been suggested that early Indo-European societies related to a holy triumvirate comprising “a supreme god, a warrior god, and a civil god” (Dumézil, 1968, 1971, 1973, cited in Qiuyu et al., 1989, p. 15). So ritual theatre and religion were intricately bound up with each other and covered all facets of life over diverse regions. The dramas would generally be led by proscribed individuals, e.g. shamans, but all the tribes-people took part and had a part to play. We can know something about ancient rituals because some remain: “even today, one can see numerous forms of "primitive theatre … ancient forms closely connected with religious ritual that have been preserved in certain remote regions as living fossils, essentially unchanged by modern civilization” (Qiuyu et al., 1989, p. 12).
Intrinsic to the original notion of (ritual as) theatre is its two-way operation in that the audience were as significant as the performers, and today, without an audience, a performance is not theatre. Where once the drama might take place, geographically speaking, anywhere in the community and environs, modern drama came to be performed in a specified place: the theatre. With the advent of the raked stage, elaborate true-to-life sets, the proscenium arch, technical wizardry, and the darkened auditorium, the spectators became steadily segregated from the ‘action’ (Kershaw, 2003). The curtain was there to
References: Barba, E., & Sanzenbach, S. (1965). Theatre laboratory 13 Rzedow. The Tulane Drama Review, 9(3), 153-165. Barba, E. (2000). The deep order called turbulence: The three faces of dramaturgy. The Drama Review, 44(4), 56-67. Beeman, W. (1993). Anthropology of theatre and spectacle. Annual Review of Anthropology, 22, 369-393. Boal, A. (1992). Translator’s introduction: Games for actors and non-actors, pp. xviii-xxxi. London: Routledge. Bohannan, P. (1992). We, the alien: An introduction to cultural anthropology. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press. Fox, J. (1994). Acts of service. NY: Tusitala Publishing. Gilbert, H., & Tompkins, J. (1996). Post-colonial drama: Theory, practice, politics. London: Routledge. Good, M. (2003).Who is your neighbour? Playback theatre and community development. Retrieved from http://www.playbacktheatre.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Good_Who-Is-%E2%80%A6.pdf 3 January 2012. Green, S. L. (2001). Boal and beyond strategies for creating community dialogue. Theater, 31(3), 47-61. Kelly, V. (2001). The globalized and the local: Theatre in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand enters the new millennium. Theatre Research International, 26(1), 1-14. Kershaw, B McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or else: From discipline to performance. New York: Routledge. Martin, C. (1993). The word becomes you. An interview. The Drama Review, 37(4), 45-62. Palmer, G.B., & Jankowiak, W.R. (1996). Performance and imagination: Toward an anthropology of the spectacular and the mundane. Cultural Anthropology, 11(2), 225-258. Peterson, W. (2001). Reclaiming the past, building a future: Maori identity in the plays of Hone Kouka. Theatre Research International, 26(1), 15-24. Qiuyu, Y., Dongsheng, H., Wichmann, E., & Richardson, G. (1989). Some observations on the aesthetics of primitive Chinese theatre. Asian Theatre Journal, 6(1), 12-30. Schechner, R. (2001). Performance studies in/for the 21st century. Anthropology and Humanism, 26(2), 158-166. Wangh, S. (2005). Revenge and forgiveness in Laramie, Wyoming. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 15(1), 1-16.