Introduction
Before we delve in further to the subject matter at hand, it is necessary to recall the concepts that will be dealt upon in this research. ………….
Ritual Space
In Ancient Greek, gods inhabited the same land along with the human beings. Features of the landscape were alluded to gods. As Zeus dominated the mountain, the nymphs roamed the springs, Pan lived in the caves, Artemis finds the wilderness as her homage, and Poseidon rules over the sea, gods are indeed tied to the Greek physical landscape. These divinely inhabited spaces are thereby considered as sacred spaces which come as the determinants of ritual space. However in special purposes, ritual space may also be created. This involves “1) when establishing a new community 2) when introducing a new ritual, and 3) when a normally secular space was to be used for a temporary ritual event”. New ritual space is usually created in the moving of altars, temples and precincts due to city transfers. The acquisition of a new god is reason enough to create a ritual space. Sometimes, there needs to be adjustments to appropriate human habitation through enlargement or whatnot. The occasions of rituals “such as a procession, sacrifice, or festival” necessitate the creation of temporary Ritual spaces. Ritual spaces in Ancient Greece do not have a specific definition. Ritual spaces depend on contexts, cultures, and on locations. Perhaps what remains shared among these spaces is that they are realms of power. The gathering of believers leads to a community sharing an event. The aims of ritual spaces is coexistence within art, architecture and people
Connect ritual spaces as connected to individual desires and collective interpretations of the notion regarding life and death, “Notions of ritual space, and patterns of behavior within such spaces, seem to be intrinsic to individual aspiration and collective resolution as sectarian groups organize means of rationalizing life and death.” Ritual spaces are assembled so believers may be conditioned to understand or comprehend a religious belief. They are designated as “pure, holy, and sacred” and thus, well promoting a sense of order. The world as imagined and the world as it exists may be bridged together by the ritual space and symbols therein. The believers are able to exist on the world that they aspire and desire. It allows the human and divine to meet. Chosky also draws an image of ritual spaces as a means towards the accomplishment of an event. “To phrase it another way, ritual spaces serve as locales of forced dynamics in which spatial cues trigger a series of concepts and events directed at the hope of achieving an aspired goal.”
By performing in the ritual space, believers are bestowed with knowledge on “how to deal, accept, and move with the unknown” . Rituals allow them to enact and experience sacred knowledge. A large aspect of this enactment is not merely the remembrance of the sacred but also how the “personal, communal, and spiritual intentions and purposes and their sacred connection are reaffirmed”. One relives the revered and participates within the divine narratives. Crucial to ritual spaces is how the person enjoins others’ intentions and affirms community. Rituals in this manner allow a certain participation and membership in an event. Ritual spaces connect people and establish relationships, roles and positions with people. In this ritual, unity among believers is attained .
In this study, the space intended mirrors after the Ritual space as a space that contains a structured event focused by strongly directed attention. It is not exclusively religious and may be secular and may vary in venues whether open-air or enclosed for the sole purpose of gathering and communally participating, enjoining and performing their rightful roles in an event. Examples may vary from churches, sports stadiums, art galleries, and the St Peter’s square in Rome.
The example of Ritual Space that would be emphasized and centred in this dissertation is the Ritual theatre which goes to say how the theatre has been connected with the concept and practice of ritual most especially the religious ritual. The argument holds that Theatre is a ritual space that involves the enactment of a knowledge held sacred. It is where intentions are communally shared with personal intentions among others. Theatre is a venue where connections are affirmed perhaps more vividly exemplified by how it has roles needed to be taken in order to enact a narrative or knowledge that somehow may be connected to the perception of the world, the universe and life and death. The roots of theatre, this paper will argue, are rooted to the sacred and the divine. In participating in a theatre, there is an attempt to remember and articulate something much higher. Thus theatre qualifies as a ritual space where people participate either through acting roles or through the roles as audience and spectators. However the theatre does not separate actors from the spectators. It in fact enjoins them in celebration of one experience. It establishes relationships, roles and positions with people.
We need to make sense that drama is perceived as indispensable as a human need. It is a varied art form, a source of pleasure, thought and emotion which has accompanied the human existence for centuries. Drama has constantly shown and informed the audiences about the conscious reality as well as unconscious ruminations. Drama is used to enact several functions initially and originating religious whether to appease the gods in successful hunting expedition, battles, or the fertility of people and agricultural fields. Later, written drama allows us and audiences to more clearly identify its functions and forms. Diverse, important sub-genres appeared, helping people to express perceptions of reality. Today, the forms and functions of drama display unfettered variety and freedom.
So much the better, for drama is fundamentally characterized by the its means of expression, its systems of signs (semiotic systems), just as drama fundamentally characterizes the human specie. All these components enable the drama or the play to communicate, and allow the spectators, during their encounter with the play, to create meaning, their meaning, the meaning of the play for each of them.
Drama and Ritual
“All public events, in their creation of limited social worlds, are exercises in holism”
Drama was said to have evolved out of the seasonal rituals which have their own sole purposes. These seasonal rituals are known to be joined with the existence of myths which in the meantime are created to translate the rituals in a manner that is durable, “The interpenetration of the myth and the ritual creates drama” . Myth allows ritual to have substance in a manner that ideal situations are reproduced. They are considered essential in interpretation of Ritual which in turn translates to drama. The similarity lies in the mimesis of myth. To understand the origin of drama is to study seasonal rituals. Ritual is considered a parent of drama along with Myth. The original dramas complement the use of religion than literature thanks to the cooperation of ritual and drama. These are taken part by actors who would like to present “an ideal or imaginary situation and impersonating characters other than themselves” for the purposes of marriage, “the feast of communion and the expulsion of evil” Clearly the ritual provided the story or the plot in which the drama revolves around. It is little wonder how the earlier incarnations of drama involves the invocation of the muses or the deities to which the drama or the ritual is supposed to be enacted during the opening and the ending portions thus revealing how it is indeed a ritual performance.
Dramatic performances are ritualistic because they not only operate on “multiple sensory levels…highly visual imagery, dramatic sounds…tactile, olfactory and gustatory stimulation” that lures audience to the performance in the “complex sensory experience”. Clearly, Drama was ritual enacted so man may express wishes and desires. Drama “defines and created the popular mythos of both public and private fantasy.” The word rite may actually be a distant cousin to the word drama. Because a dramatic performance is a visual as well as an active make-believe participation or performance intended to affirm a belief or knowledge, it is only logical that dramatic performances be rituals in their own right and vice versa.
Further blurring of ritual and drama may be well exemplified in Eastern theatre as revealed in the “magical plays” or “shamanic plays”. In such cases, ritual is indeed presented on stage. The creation of each theatre involves the exorcisation of evil spirits and demons. Interestingly, this is performed by a ritualistic performance of an actor dressed as a white tiger chasing a black clad demon away. The rites do not end the audience itself must take distance and must not speak to the White Tiger lest they will commit taboo. Performances are clearly taken in high significant regard as rituals. While ritualistic performances can drive away demons, they may also lure good fortune thus suggesting the power of dramatic performances as rituals that bring luck, wealth, and prosperity
Drama and Architecture
Before delving into Ritual Theatres, it is essential to first and foremost focus on the definition as well as the role of dramatic space or architecture. “The interaction of architecture and drama takes place on at least two levels” postulates further:
Some buildings (most obviously theatres) are containers for drama; others themselves take part in the plot of human life by providing the audience with a set on which people participate in a drama that is both rewarding social ritual and satisfactory at a personal level. Of course the best theatres and opera houses combine the two, allowing the drama on the stage to be powerfully displayed while engaging the public in a series of events that makes a visit to the theatre a totally involving experience.
First a theatre clearly functions as that venue in which dramas, already established as rituals in their own right, take place. This easily translates theatres to be ritual spaces in which ritual performances brought by drama are enacted in. Then Davey focuses on the communal participation aspect of the theatre. The ideal theatre, he further elaborates, is a combination of being a venue of drama and at the same time, a venue that celebrates and allows the enactment as well as performance of “social ritual” that will then satisfy an aspect of the person. The ideal theatre is not merely just a container or a static place in which such rites are enacted. It most importantly involves the people within through a series of events. This is true to the space I want to imagine. It is a container of a structured event that solicits strongly directed attention. It gathers and invites communal participation.
Davey cites that the ideal theatre is embodied by the Paris Opera which was not only wealthy and aesthetically pleasing in its decorative elements, but it also invited social interactions. The space was in fact intended to be large enough for mingling. Another example, the Philharmonie in Berlin is “interwoven by a series of public routes which appear at first to be almost random in their disposition”. But in fact these routes encourage “casual social contact” and the prospect of community and assurance that s/he is one of the many spectators. There is a sense of belonging which completes the theatre. Davey would actually consider Churches to be theatres in their own right. It did not matter what denomination it is, as all Churches contain drama in their own manners. The drama is the “celebration of humankind’s relationship to God” which according to Davey, necessitates a theatre or at the least a theatrical performance. Theatrical performances are rituals because they allow the intermingling as well as involvement of “time and light, space and nature”. The church, a theatre, brings drama and ritual together which allows it to be one of the most ideal ritual spaces. It combines and synthesizes “deep human feelings of many kinds”. Architecture and ritual spaces are not only supposed to be aesthetic in their appeal. But it must also emanate a certain aura that will draw the masses through their “truly dramatic architecture” enough to “touch our hearts and give us a sense of occasions”. In every act and performance, in every actor and in every costume detail there should be a hint or a suggestion of the sacred. Theatres are ritual spaces because they allow for such spaces to contain and have “a deep understanding of space, materials, people and the natural world”.
Ritual Theatre
“The ritual of the theatre is, then, a meeting-place between our imagination and our reason. Perfect harmony between those two aspects of our minds provides the greatest experience.” .
One trait that would be shared between Theatre and Ritual according to is that it involves the “action of becoming ‘other’, adopting a different identity” . Indeed, it has been established that rituals are performances that may be contained by venues such as theatres. There are authors that call rituals “social drama” as rituals invite social interaction. The long standing argument, according to is that Theatre is an offshoot of ritual and vice versa. Perceiving ritual as performance emphasized the aspects of “creativity and physicality” in human beings such that is apparent in theatrical performances today. Theatre is only one of the many ways ritual may be performed. It is enjoined by “sports, play, public spectacles” all of which share the qualities of performance while enacting and approaching rituals. Participants always take part of the practice of make believing and taking other roles so much so that Rock concerts and football games may be considered ritual spaces. Ritual accompanies performances that had been popular as “spectacles of the twentieth century”. But none perhaps take the reenactment and reinterpretation into heart that theatre puts to heart. It is a direct display of image, concepts and sounds.
Existed as productions created in order to please, appease and entertain the gods. Eastern and Western drama both enjoin this as they all perform invocations to the gods. Ritual
performances, to note, are always performed in temple settings as dances are performed to demonstrate or “reenact sacred events” which may vary from the creation of the universe, the movement of ancestors and other being “narrative tales presented to entertain the gods” and thus involving sacrifices as the bridge between human and divine relations and exchange.
Theatres are venues of such sacred performances. They also frame these performances that in turn, will heighten their significance. Theatre frames ritualistic performances to involve aspects and details such as “stage, curtains, tickets, audience, familiar script” in the make-believe, reenactment or taking the position of an ‘other’. Theatre condenses and substantiates, unifies, completes as well as makes tangible and coherent the abstract incoherent world of symbolic sacred ungraspable concepts. It transfers the divine experience, the life and death question and the concept of gods and universes. to reality.
“In brief, performances seem ritual-like because they explicitly model the world” . The theatre is a space which condenses reality in that compacted space. No matter how it is a simplified version of the chaotic human experience, the effect of theatre is that it may change perceptions regarding how the world is perceived.
Interestingly, in other cultures, the concepts of ritual and theatre are not as distinguished as in Western perspective. appropriately upholds that “If traditional Chinese theater is full of ritual, it is not surprising to find that traditional Chinese ritual is full of theater” . To further emphasize the link existing between. In fact they may just overlap due to their similarities such as in Chinese Theatre, Temple becomes a stage and a ritual precinct in festivals for instance. The stage is even considered as “an extension of the temple” And as such the performers and actors themselves see to it that they pay their respects to the deities by dedicating the performances to them. “The whole acting troupe participates in the public offerings that accompany the temple festival.” Before actors reveal themselves and perform on the stage, they are known to firstly stop by a backstage shrine in the chosen patron deity for the troupe in order for them to pay their due respects . It is not rare in Chinese culture to invite acting troupes in Daoist rites of the dead in order to perform the warding of hell demons and spirits in the journey of the dead. “Doing is believing” like earlier said. There needs to be no institutionalized religion to do ritual theatre. There only needs to silent reverence and gravity in each movement .
Theatre is conceived as possessing a “magical ritual” that will have a certain “healing” and curing properties in the spectator. To perceive theatre as ritualistic man links with nature which provides sustenance and replenishment, “man found himself indivisible with Nature and the so-called gods were natural subtle powers.” ritual theatre heals from the harsh chaotic conditions of rationalism, logocentrism and civilization. By removing gods from the theatre and by stripping the theatre its capability to “recreate life and humanity in the spectator” , theatre loses its essence and significance thus suggesting that theatre has become so important in human civilization and world precisely because it is primarily ritualistic. This also puts to note the transcendence and higher sense of meaning Theatre in nature could bring due to its capability to contain dramatic performances that may be considered as rituals.
Indeed, the womb of theatre, considered the oldest profession, is clearly religion. This has been the same in several cultures such as in Egypt Passion Play celebrating Osiris’ death), Medieval Theatre Japan (Noh plays) China (religious exercises) India (Hindu myth that pantomimes the All Father Brahma’s creation of the cosmos) and there is Greece .
Pioneers of the ritual theatre in The West
” Aristotle’s explanation of the origins underline the principle that, wherever theatre appears, it does so as a development of a ritual”
Ritual Theatre in the West finds its humble beginnings in Ancient Greece. Athens in particular celebrated the Dionysian festival in the city of Dionysia. The climax of the festival was the performance of the Greek tragedies which will be held in a three-day period. The producers, performers, as well as poets were also involved in a “tragic anon (competition)”. The victor gains instant fame, status and prestige. The winning poet are given immediate respect that may earn them a seat in politics or the miltary. One such poet who had won and earned several political and military posts was Sophocles. All tragic performances were in respect of Dionysus. As such performance and the theatre was integral in the Dionysian cult. The Theatre of Dionysus itself is regarded as holy and sacred. It is little wonder that this will be located near the Temple of Dionysus. The proximity concretizes how these two entities alone are related to each other. This case in Ancient Greece also emphasizes how theatrical performances are taken in high sacred and holy regard so much so that there are several restrictions that abound during the festival. .
The Dionysian Theatre can contain as much as 14,000 spectators. Clearly, it is the centre of the festival and that the entire sacred ceremonies revolve here. It is here where the sacrifice is made, where the dithyramb chorus is performed, where the comic competition is held, and then finalized by the tragic competition. In the 3rd, 4th and 5th day, tragedies had been performed from various poets. It was the announcement of the tragic anon or competition winner which concludes the festival. In the next day, the assessment of the festival takes place similarly in the theatre.
Tragedy was not born right away. Its earlier manifestation was brought by the Dithyramb, “a religious chant sung and danced by a chorus of some fifty make celebrants in honor of the god, Dionysus” (p. 10) Indeed, tragedy’s origins was strictly religious in nature. Safe to say the dithyramb is one of the pioneers of ritual theatre in the West. With regards to personalities, Aeschylus and Thespis are considered as pioneers that had contributed largely to the dramatic contests thanks to the dramas they have written and their innovation that shaped and enhanced dithyrambs. Thespis introduced the first actor which was then added by Aeschylus and Sophocles. These actors were not supposed to be realistic in their performance though. Their dialogue is characterized as being “constructed in alternating rhythms and patterns of a ritualistic nature”, hardly not the regular everyday speech, but it was intended to be “ritual drama”. The writing behind the tragedies in the past, according to cannot be compared as the tragedies in these recent centuries such as those composed by Shakespeare. The tragedies of the past were made in the intention to present “symbolic rituals–the sublimation of an action rather than the life-like representation of it–the characters larger than life–the speech rhythmic and sometimes hypnotic in its effect” ..
Eventually, the fall of Athens would bring about the demise of Ritual Theatre in Greece. As other city states have been building their own theatres and take from the culture and tradition of Athens, Athenian theatre was transported through-out, outside Greece. The destruction of “civic pride” that Athenians held dear had also destroyed the faith in their gods, including Dionysus. “Faith in the gods began to give way to scepticism; patriotism and idealism degenerated into materialism.” Athenian was split up and as wealth and civilization continue to abound, the Greeks were less interested in arranging festivals that would be the inspiration of ritual theatre. The Roman Theatre had brief incarnations of ritual theatre but it easily was corrupted, shut down and forbidden. Perhaps the closest to the long standing Ritual Theatre today is the Christian Church which celebrates the Catholic ritual in masses. They would not mirror or parallel the achievements of Greek Ritual Theatre.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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