Performance Studies

Ritual-Part I (pp.45-69)
Spring 2007
DFL
Steven Yang

Ritual, Play and Performance

Performance consists of ritualized gestures

and sounds.
Rituals helps people deal with difficult
transitions, ambivalent relationships,
hierarchies, and desires that trouble, exceed
or violate the norms of daily life.
Play gives people a chance to temporarily
experience the tabu, the excessive, and the
risky. Example: Oedipus Rex.
Both rituals and plays lead people into a
second reality.

Rituals and play transform people,

either temporarily or permanently.
Some rituals transform people
permanently; we called them rites of
passage.

Varieties of Ritual

Religious rituals, the ritual of

everyday life, the rituals of life roles,
the rituals of each profession, the
rituals of politics, business and
judicial system.
Even animals perform rituals.
For religious rituals, see fig 3.1 in
p.46.

Sacred and Secular

Sacred rituals associate with religious

belief.
Secular rituals associate with
everyday life, sports, and any other
activity not specifically religious in
character.
But the neat division is spurious.
Fig 3.3, 3.4, examples of scaredsecular rituals.

Structures, Functions, Processes,

and Experiences
Rituals and ritualizing can be
understood from four perspectives:
1.Structure
2.Function
3.Processes
4.Experiences
Seven key themes related to
performance studies. (p.50)

Rituals as Actions, as Performance

Emile Durkheim theorized that

performing rituals created and
sustained social solidarity.
Arnold van Genneps three-phase
structure of ritual actions: the
preliminal, liminal, and postliminal.
Victor Turner develops van Genneps
insight into a theory of ritual.

Human and Animal Rituals

The evolutionary scheme of ritual can

be depicted as a ritual tree. (fig 3.5)
While animals ritual are fixed,
humans rituals are complex and
sophisticated.
Three categories of humans rituals.
For primates rituals, see Jane
Goodalls boxes.
Gorilla and sport fans.

Rituals as Liminal Performances

The liminal-a period of time when a

person is betwixt and between social
categories or personal identities.
Turner recognized in it a possibility for
ritual to be creative, to make the way
for new situations, identities, and
social realities by means of antistructure.

Limens, Lintels and Stages

A limen is a threshold or sill, a thin

strip neither inside nor outside a
building or room linking one space to
another. (see the Limens box)
An empty theatre is liminal, open to
all kinds of possibilities.
Liminoid activities v.s liminal
activities. (see fig3.9)

Anti-Structural and Communitas

Turner called the liberation from the

constraints of ordinary life antistructure and the experience of ritual
camaraderie communitas.
Normative communitas vs.
Spontaneous communitas
Ritual experience can also be
terrifying.

Ritual Time/Space

Because ritual take place in special,

the very act of entering the sacred
space has an impact on participants.
In such space, special behavior is
required.
Richard Schechners practices this
idea in his workshops.

Transportations and
Transformations

Transformation: Liminal rituals

permanently change who people are.
Transportations: Liminoid rituals
effect a temporary change, i.e.
spontaneous communitas or severalhours-long performance of a role.
Being double negative during the
performance.

Social Drama

Every social drama develops in four phases,

one following the order: breach, crisis,
redressive action, and reintegration (or
schism).
Turner integrated his social drama into his
theory of ritual process. (fig 3.13)
The fluid relationship between aesthetic
dramas and social dramas. (see fig 3.14)