Are there universals of performance in myth, ritual, and drama?

Abstract

In this essay I will discuss what I think is a characteristic developmental relationship from ritual to theatre, and I will lay out the relationship of both to social drama. The figures in this chapter express schematically some of these connections. I have argued that every major socioeconomic formation has its dominant form of cultural-aesthetic “mirror” in which it achieves a certain degree of self-reflexivity. Nonindustrial societies tend to stress immediate context-sensitive ritual; industrial pre-electronic societies tend to stress theatre, which assigns meaning to macroprocesses – economic, political, or generalized familial problems – but remains insensitive to localized, particularized contexts. Yet both ritual and theatre crucially involve liminal events and processes and have an important aspect of social metacommentary. In many field situations I have observed in markedly different cultures, in my experience of Western social life, and in numerous historical documents, I have clearly seen a community's movement through time taking a shape which is obviously “dramatic.” It has a proto-aesthetic form in its unfolding – a generic form like the general mammalian condition that we still have with us throughout all the global radiation of specific mammalian forms to fill special niches. As detailed in my earlier writings, in the first stage, Breach, a person or subgroup breaks a rule deliberately or by inward compulsion, in a public setting. In the stage of Crisis, conflicts between individuals, sections, and factions follow the original breach, revealing hidden clashes of character, interest, and ambition.

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