In theatre and performance studies, we have a story that we tell about the origins of drama. In the misty pre-history of humanity, rituals were performed to the gods incorporating song, dance, special apparel, manipulation of props, and the recitation of intentional language.
In this legend, these transpersonal, spiritual events eventually shifted to interpersonal, social events. While retaining ritual-like techniques, theatre became a forum in which citizens told stories to other citizens about issues of shared import. Speaking to one another instead of to the gods, we no longer expected our rituals to actually work, but instead to represent. Rather than attempting real-world transformation, theatre tried to show us what transformation looks like.
This origin myth is a necessary foundation for many revolutionaries in the theatre and performing arts. They say – sometimes in a hushed whisper – let’s return drama to its roots in ritual. Let’s forgo the gaudy illustrations of human suffering, joy, and healing. Instead, let’s actually experience suffering and joy onstage. Let’s actually enact healing rites inside the charmed circle of spectators.
With deep appreciation I welcome these innovations to the imagined community of Western Drama. Without them we’d remain mired in the fantasy of objective rationality inherited from the Greeks or obsessed with the irrefutable authority of the text as truth inherited from our Judeo-Christian traditions. Yet I am always skeptical about quests for origins. The reality you find is never as good as the dream you sought, and looking towards an idealized past is often just a rejection of the present.
What if we turned the myth around? What if rather than ritual begetting theatre, what if theatre begat ritual? Perhaps a pre-historic human got up on a rock and began to wail and flail the felt forms of her personal experience across the fire to her watching friend. Perhaps the friend understood, perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps the performer was changed by her attempt to share with an attentive other the infinity she felt within her.
Maybe the next night the friend was gone and the pre-historic performer repeated the wail and flail, looking up into the night sky and hoping that some distant, invisible friend might see her. Perhaps she did it the next night, and the next, or on every full moon or every time she saw a shooting star or just every time she felt alone. Performance is pleasurable. Pleasure wants to repeat itself. Repetition begats ritual.
If pre-historic performance art as the precursor to organized religion is too much of a stretch, at least let's consider ritual and theatre side by side rather than parent and child. Both give form to the baffling sensations that rattle around inside the human body and pierce its permeable border. Whether sharing those forms with close friends, the majesty of the empty night sky, or an obeisance-requesting deity, we enact the shapes of our striving and - in hushed whispers - hope that this enactment will yield transformation.
