Student work Week2

The Performance of Culture

From Ritual to Theater and Back

WEEK 2

THE PERFORMANCE OF CULTURE - ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES

• - This article focuses mainly on defining and comparing the term “performance”

• - Carlson says that it is the anthropological and sociological strategies that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s that are heavily responsible in defining performance as well as making connections between traditional theatre studies, as well as anthropology and sociology

• - Author, Richard Schechner listed seven areas where performance and social sciences coincide, These were:

• 1) Performance in everyday life, including gatherings of every kind.

• 2) The structure of sports, ritual, play, and public political behaviours

• 3) Analysis of various modes of communication (other than the written word); semiotics.

• 4) Connections between human and animal behaviour patterns with an emphasis on play and ritualized behaviour.

• 5) Aspects of psychotherapy and emphasize person-to-person interaction, acting out and body awareness.

• 6) Ethnography and prehistory - both of exotic and familiar cultures.

• 7) Constitution of unified theories of performance, which are, in fact, theories of behaviour.

• - Anthropologist, Dell Hymes, defines performance as a situation in which one or more persons “assume responsibility to an audience and to tradition as they understand it.”

• - The audience plays a key role in most attempts to define performance.

• - Also an agreement among performance theorists that all performance is based upon some pre-existing model, script, or pattern of action.

• - There has been a general agreement that within every culture there can be discovered a certain kind of activity, set apart from other activities by space, time, attitude, or all three, that can be spoken of an analysed as “performance.”

• - Author Milton Singer listed traditional theatre and dance, as well as concerts, recitations, religious festivals, weddings, and so on as performances.

• - He said that all performances possessed certain features: “a definitely limited time span, a beginning and an end, an organized program of activity, a set of performers, an audience and a place and occasion of performance.

• - MacAloon’s definition of cultural performance as “occasion in which as a culture we reflect upon and define ourselves, dramatize our collective myths and history, present ourselves with alternatives, and eventually change in some ways while remaining the same in others.”

• Carlson concludes by explaining that the contemporary

thought about what performance is and how it operates is derived from performance within a culture, performative contexts and the relationship of performer to audience.

• “There has been a general agreement that within every culture there can be discovered a certain kind of activity, set apart from other activities by space, time, attitude, or all three, that can be spoken of and analyzed as “performance.” (Carlson, 52). – courseware

• Anticipating the subsequent research of scholars such as Goffman and Turner, Gurvitch (George Gurvitch 1957) called attention to the theatrical or performance elements in all social ceremonies, even in “a simple reception or gathering of friends.” (Carlson, 52). -courseware

• Video 1) African Masai dance performance (anthropological example: African society)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFjNsT6jQdY&feature=related

• Video 2) Watson’s family reunion (sociological example: Western society)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbWoZheTvAo

• Video 3) Joseph and the Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat (modern theatrical example)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ehN3KvO8sY&feature=related

• A cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals and rites of passage.

• Ideas and perspectives on performance were covered thoroughly in this chapter. Carlson constantly used his theories as a point of reference and comparison when analyzing other writers and authors covered in this passage.

• The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (1967)

• Schism and Continuity in an African Society (1968)• The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969)• Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in

Human Society (1974)• Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (1978)• From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play

(1982)• Liminality, Kabbalah, and the Media (1985) • The Anthropology of Performance (1986)• The Anthropology of Experience (1986)

• kaiko celebration of the Tsembaga of Highlands Papua New Guinea

• the dancing was not an isolated phenomenon• after supper dancing resumes and goes on all

night-by dawn everyone has danced with everyone else= strong alliance

• start of celebration hosts owed meat to guest, guest owed items of trade to host

• socio-economic-aesthetic-ritual system

• entertainment itself is vehicle for debtors and creditors to exchange places; also occasion for market and is fun

• dancing is a performance- and enjoyed as such-spectators serving frequently as acerbic critics

• also a way of facilitating trade, finding mates, cementing military alliances, and reaffirming (or reordering) tribal hierarchies

• the dances are pivots in a system transforming destructive behavior into constructive alliances*

• transformation for combat behavior into performance is the theatrical hear of the kaiko

• characterization and presentation of real or possible events-• the story, plot, or dramatic action worked out by people, gods, or

demons- is transformation

• theatrical transformation appears to be of only two kinds:

1. displacement of antisocial, injurious, disruptive behavior by ritualized gestures and displays

2. invention of characters who act out fictional events or real events fictionalized by virtue of their being acted out like documentary theatre or film or roman-type gladiatorial games

• an ecological ritual similar to kaiko is kurumugl

• kurumugl people knew what the ritual does and why it was established-to inhibit warfare among feuding groups

• social drama has more variables, the outcome is in doubt-it is more like a game or sporting contest

• aesthetic drama is almost entirely prearranged, and the participants can concentrate not on strategies for achieving their gorals

“EFFICACY” DEFINITION

Efficacy is the capacity to produce a desired size of an effect under ideal or optimal conditions. It is these conditions that distinguish efficacy from the related concept of effectiveness, which relates to change under real-life conditions.

Adjective is “Efficient.”

From Wikipedia and Wiktionary

• a performance is called theatre or ritual because of where it is performed, by whom, and under what circumstances

• also, whether one calls a specific performance “ritual” or “theatre” depends mostly on context and function

• if performance’s purpose is to effect transformations-to be efficacious-than it is ritual

• no performance is pure efficacy or ritual

EFFICACY -------------- ENTERTAINMENT Ritual Theater

• Results fun• Link to an absent Other Only for those here• Symbolic time emphasis now• Performer possessed, in trance performer knows

what s/he’s doing• Audience participates audience watches• Audience believes audience

appreciates• Criticism discouraged criticism flourishes

• Collective creativity individual creativity

• at each period in every culture one or the other is dominant-one is ascending while the other is descending

• Schechner, says he thinks that for western theatre it can be shown that when the braid is “tight” (when efficacy and entertainment are both present in nearly equal degrees) theatre flourishes

• When efficacy dominates, performances are universalistic, allegorical, ritualized, tired to a stable established order; this kind of theatre persists for relatively long time

• When entertainment dominates, performances are class-orientated, individualized, show business, constantly adjusting to the taste of fickle audiences

• Actuality 1 --- ENCOUNTER/EXCHANGE--- Actuality 2

• Actuality 1 <BY MEANS OF PRODUCTION> Actuality 2

• Ritual --------BY MEANS OF THEATER--------Entertainment

• Entertainment---BY MEANS OF THEATER----Ritual

Katherine Bell 1997

• anthropologist • 1926 -1997

Works• Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea

People (1968) • Rappaport, R.A. (1979) Ecology, Meaning and Religion. Richmond:

North Atlantic Books. • Rappaport, R.A. (1984) Pigs for the Ancestors. 2nd edition. New

Haven: Yale University Press.

• Rappaport, R.A. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of

Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• New Zealand Haka

• Myth

1. Ra + Hine-Raumati = Tanerore 2. Tinirau

• Types of Haka

1. Haka peru peru 2. Haka Taparahi

• Facial expressions

1.Whakapi2.Weru3.Tahu4.Potete

• ka mate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txu5S7dcJjQ

•

’Tis death! ‘tis death! (or: I may die) ’Tis life! ‘tis life! (or: I may live)

’Tis death! ‘tis death! ’Tis life! ‘tis life!This the hairy man that stands here...

…who brought the sun and caused it to shineA step upward, another step upward!

A step upward, another... the Sun shines!

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora! Ka mate! ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!

Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuruNāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā

Ā, upane! ka upane!Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra!

• -celebrated on November 1 and 2

• -the days of the dead is a family reunion which honours those who no longer have bodies and invites them , for a short period, into the homes and lives of the living

• -for weeks before the celebration merchants sell goods in the market to offer to the dead including incense, candles, seasonal flowers, vegetables and fruits of the harvest

• -food is very important to the festival – food is a part of life , cooking signifies civilization and culture – food can be understood to be the mediator of life and death

• -at home an alter is improvised usually near the permanent family altar which is used for devotions to their special saints

• - the graves are cleaned and decorated with flowers, candles and food

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jim2KUYy1Tk&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86_Z0Nscs9g&feature=related

• - 930pm – a small dance fire is lit - women begin to sing num songs around the fire –form a large circle - young boys begin to dance

• 1030 pm – dance is mobbed by attending men and women

• 1130pm – dancers express support for the women’s clapping with strong stomping dance steps which are accentuated by shaking sounds of rattles around their ankles

• 1140pm – as the songs end and begin, the dancers from the group keep the momentum of the dance up in order to keep the num from cooling off

•The Giraffe Dance - performed by men and women

• 1145 pm – there is a tremendous amount of action around the dance fire – the singing is strong and physical movements are animated à the atmosphere becomes exciting

• Midnight – dancing continues – healing begins as those possessing kia place their hands on the ill and draw the illness from their bodies

• 230am – the excitement of the dance decreases and the number of singers and dancers begins to decrease

• - dancing continues until 830am when the decision to end the dance is made à the dance area returns to its normal uncluttered, unpopulated condition in the camp

• - men and women work together in the Giraffe dance –women sing, men dance

• - the role by men is more flamboyant , paralleling their role as hunters

• -women in performing the music play the complimentary role as they do in providing the more reliable vegetable foods

Discussion Questions

1. After hearing the variety of different ways the term "performance" has been defined, can you think of a definition in your own words to describe performance?

2. Do you believe that the simplest form of interaction, such as a one on one conversation with a close friend, is still an example of a performance? Why or why not?

3. In relation to the rituals discussed like the kaiko celebration of the Tsembaga of Highlands Papua New Guinea, do you than think political, social or economic assemblies, conferences, meetings, and/or meetings could possibly be considered a ritual too?

4. What do you feel is the importance or value of having ritual in our lives?