Excerpt from Between Theater and Anthropology

By Richard Schechner, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985

POINTS OF CONTACT BETWEEN ANTHROPOTOGICAL AND THEATRICAL THOUGHT

Whether practitioners and scholars of other discipline like it or not, there are points of contact between Anthropology and Theater; and there are likely to be more coming. These points of contact are at present selective—only a little of Anthropology touches a little of Theater. But quantity is not the only, or even the decisive, measure of conceptual fertility. This mixing will, I think, be fruitful. CIifford Geertz writes that "in recent years there has been an enormous amount of genre mixing in social science, as in intellectual life generally (I980, 165). He goes on to specify the "drama analogy" as one of the major trends in anthropological thinking. That analogy has been developed most thoroughly and thoughtfully by Victor Turner, who saw social conflict following the structure of drama and adapting its subjunctive ‘‘as if" mood. Turner's work fits nicely with that of Erving Goffman, who, at the level of scene and ‘‘character" (who is being or pretending to be, who), found Theater everywhere in everyday life.

But what about contacts being made from the other direction, from the various performing Arts? These are the contacts I know something about from my work as a Theater director. And these are the ones I will concentrate on here.

To what degree are performers rituals—the deer dancers of the Arizona Yaqui or the Korean shamans (to name just two groups about whom I have direct information)——aware of the performing-Arts aspects of their sacred work? Also, what about large-scale performative events that cannot really be easily classified as belonging to either ritual or Theater or politics? I mean performances like the Ramlilas of northern India (see chapter 4) and the Ta’Ziyeh passion plays of Iran. Is contact a one-way or even a two-way operation? Some anthropologists, Turner foremost among them, began "performing Anthropology" (Turner and Turner 1982); and some Theater people, Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, and Eugenio Barba especially, explored what Barba calls "theatre Anthropology" (Barba I980, I98I, I982a). Before looking at these concrete examples, I will discuss each of six points of contact.

Either permanently as in initiation rites or temporarily as in aesthetic Theater and trance dancing, Performers—and sometimes spectators too—are changed by the activity of performing. How is a permanent transformation or a temporary transportation achieved? Is Olivier playing Othelto different than a Noh actor performing the mask of Benkei or a Balinese sanghyang dancer in trance? Is there any real difference in meaning among the various terms different cultures have devised to describe what performers do? Can the transformation of consciousness during performance be measured at the level of brain activity?

physicalization of the impossibility of a complete transformation into the deer.

At the moments when deer dancer is "not himself" and yet "not not himself,"

his own identity, and that of the deer, is locatable only in the liminal areas of

"characterization," "representation," "imitation," "transportation," and "transformation" (see chapter 3). All of these words say that performers can’t really say Who they are. Unique among animals, humans carry and express multiple and ambivalent identities simultaneously.

Those of the Yaqui watching the deer dance feel that a being from the huya aniya ("flower world"), the world of wild, free beings, has temporarily entered the human world—not exactly a captured being but one who has agreed to visit. This is not so different from what the Balinese feel about the gods and Spirits who "descend" to possess dancers in trance. However it may be conceptually, the techniques of "getting there," of preparing the performer to perform, are much the same for the deer dancer as for the Balinese trance dancer or for an actor playing a role in New York: observation, practice, imitation, collection, repetition.

At the same time, it must be noted that when an "outsider" learns the deer dance, or a version of it, the Yaqui themselves regard this dancing very differently than they do their own deer dancing. The Mexican Ballet Folkloric has a number called ‘Deer Dance." Anselmo Valencia, ritual leader of the Yaqui of New Pascua, Arizona, says this about the Ballet Folklorico:

Valencia: The people that brought this Mexican company together were practicing the various cultural dances in many parts of Mexico—anyone can learn the dance, and they did. So they brought out a very broad imitation of the deer dance.

Question: How did that make the Yaquis who saw it, and who knew how to dance the deer, feel?

Valencia: Very, very discouraged. In fact, one of the young men that became a deer dancer was in training at that time for the military and he saw the dance in Mexico. He was very discouraged and he said; "You know, they are just making fools of the Yaquis.’’ I told him, don’t took at it that way. Took at it as a play. There’s nothing religious about it, nothing Indian about it. It is for the non-indian. It's not a Yaqui performance.

Question: Are things different in the Folklorico from the dance we saw yesterday?

Valencia: Everything is different. The deer head is different, the gait is different. It doesn’t harm us, it frustrates us. So our people stopped doing it. It is frustrating to have somebody else say, ‘‘l’m doing a Yaqui thing,’’ when the Yaquis know that it is not.[1981, 4]

Valencia also told of old deer songs that were recorded and sold. The old songs had been "very good for hundreds and hundreds of years," but "recording the mysteries of such deer songs took spiritual powers away from the songs" and the people stopped singing them.

Valencia: If a hundred songs were recorded, and a hundred songs were sold, I think that we would not use them anymore. lt’s not the condition of ‘‘freshness.’’ You have to be a Yaqui, or at least an Indian, to understand how the mysteries of that song — the words, the purpose of it, the spiritual purpose of it—to understand that the spiritual benefits of the song are withdrawn if the song is commercialized. [198I, 4-5].

At present, largely due to Valencia’s leadership, the songs and the dances are being restored to the Yaqui. The point to note is that such performances do not have an independent Life: they are related to the audience that hears them, the spectators who see them.. The force of the performance is in the very specific relationship between performers and those-for-whom-the performance-exists. When the consumer audience comes in, the "spiritual powers" depart.

The Balinese say that a person who injures himself while in trance in faking.

The beauty of "performance consciousness" is that it activates alternatives: "this and "that" are operative simultaneously. In ordinary life people live out destinies - everything appears predetermined: there is scant chance to say "Cut, take it again." But performance consciousness is subjunctive, full of alternatives and potentiality. During rehearsals especially, alternatives are kept alive, the work is intentionally unsettled. This celebration of contingency - a true, if temporary triumph over death and destiny - describes even ritual performances, especially those rituals conducted by old masters whose ability to improvise is not denied them.

This same performative principle applies to Noh drama and is visible there in the mask that is too small for the actor's face - too small that is , if the mask is intended to cover the whole face (as it does in Ramila). In Noh, below the delicate white mask of the young female the spectator sees the thick, dark jowls of the mature male performer. The extreme formality of Noh leaves no doubt that this double exposure is no accident. Why is part of the film actor’s face left showing—thereby undercutting the very illusion the mask and costume create? Is not the delight of Noh increased by the knowledge of the incomplete transformation achieved?

Zeami, instructing the Noh shite in the fifteenth century on how to train and perform, emphasizes the dialectical tension between taí and yu, literally "what is seen by the mind" (tai) and "what is seen by the eyes" (yu). Recently, Tatsuro Ishimi investigated the later writings of Zeami where these ideas are expressed.

As with many instructions given the actor—in Euro-American traditions as well as Asian—an apparently simple statement is actually, in practice, complex. For the tai of Noh may he said to reside in the mask, which is plainly visible. But not materially of the actor, and the yu of Noh is in the fleshy jowl revealed behind the mask but mostly concealed by it. The work of the shite is to make wholly manifest the tai of the mask: this is done not just by wearing the mask or by actively animating it but by surrendering to it, by abolishing one’s own yu. This kind of work is not so different from what Grotowski—influenced by Asian forms, especially yoga and Kathakali—urged on his performers.

Both Grotowski and Zeami demand of actors years of training. Obtaining the means to manifest tai is equivalent to what Grotowski calls the actor’s "sacrifice [of] the innermost part of himself."

In both these cases the actor undergoes profound, even permanent, changes in consciousness. It is very important to note, with regard to the state of Euro-American culture in the late twentieth century, that while Zeami’s program has been in place for more than four hundred years, being passed on from father to son among several families of Noh shite, Grotowski’s "poor theatre’’ phase, producing masterful productions like the Constant Prince, Akropolis, and Apokolypsis cum Figarís, lasted barely ten years, until about 1969. It was as if Grotowski’s project could not find the means of continuing because the personal consciousness it evoked and required on a continuous basis was too demanding, his rigorous system of training not compatible with Euro-American individualism-narcissism.

Brecht, Like Zeami, Stanislavski, and Grotowski, emphasizes the creative possibilities of the incomplete and problematic kind of transformation that the performer undertakes.

The distance between the character and the performer allows a commentary to be inserted; for Brecht this was most often a political commentary, but it could also be—as it is for postmodern dancers and performance artists—an aesthetic or personal commentary. Brecht found the kind of acting he wanted in Chinese Theater. Pointing out the difficulties European actors have in "becoming" their roles night after night, Brecht says, "These problems are unknown to the Chinese performer, for he rejects complete conversion. He limits himself from the start to simply quoting the character played. But with what art he does this!" (1964, 94). Thus Brecht, like the other master performers-directors, emphasizes techniques necessary for this kind of acting: acting where the transformation of consciousness is not only intentionally incomplete but also revealed as such to the spectators, who delight in the unresolved dialectic.

Needless to say, this is not the only kind of acting. Stanislavski’s work, especially as it was elaborated on in America, forms the basis of a naturalism that attempts to hide all artifice. This is the dominant style in American films and television. If not dominant, it is strongly present in American theater. And there are numerous places where by means of trance, masks for the face and body, or other performative techniques, a total transformation of consciousness is intended. These transformations are for the most part temporary— I call the "transformations" (see chapter 3). Interestingly enough, the more mature, skilled, and respected the performer, the more likely she or he is to practice an incomplete or unresolved transformation.

A corollary issue that may upon full investigation prove to be the key to the problem of transformation of consciousness is exactly what it is that is expected of the audience. Are they to watch from a distance and judge, as Brecht wanted his audiences to do? Or are they meant to be swept up into the performance, responding with such intensity—as at some of the churches I’ve attended in New York City—that during the peak of the service everyone, or nearly everyone, is performing? Between these extremes almost every other kind of audience deportment and participation can find its place. All along the continuum, different kinds of attention are required of the spectators - and different kinds of transformations of consciousness within the performers. Thus there are several varieties of transformed consciousness involved: among individual performers, among the performing group. Among the audience as individuals and as a group—and between these entities.

In all kinds of performances a certain definite threshold is crossed. And if it isn't, the performance fails. When I was directing The Performance Group (1967-80), bad reviews sometimes combined with bad weather and lack of advertising so that very few people showed up at the Theater. On several occasions the members of TGP debated just before a scheduled performance whether indeed the "show must go on." As a rule of thumb, we decided that if the performers outnumbered the audience we’d cancel. Because unless there were enough spectators to animate the Theater—an environmental Theater, mind you, wherein performers are aware of the audience, where space is shared and brought to life by the interaction between performers and spectators—the show itself would lack living yeast and fail to rise. Noh Theater performance functions detached from its audience. Of course, Theater and dance (whether aesthetic or ritual) that need audience participation are more dependent on the audience than events where the spectator’s role is that of passive recipient. But even when apparently passive, as at a concert of classical music or a performance of Racine, a full house eager to see this performance, to attend the work of this particular artist, literally lifts a cast of players, propels, and sustains them.

Spectators are very aware of the moment when a performance takes off. A "presence" is manifest, something has "happened" The performers have touched or moved the audience, and some kind of collaboration, collective

special theatrical life, is born. This intensity of performance—and I, personally, don't think the same kind of thing can happen in films or television, whose forte is to affect people individually but not to generate collective energies—has been called "flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi(1975, 35—36).

Performances gather their energies almost as if time and rhythm were concrete, physical, pliable things. Time and rhythm can be used in the same way as text, props, costumes, and the bodies of the performers and audience. A great performance modulates intervals of sound and silence, the increasing and decreasing density of events temporally. spatially, emotionally, and kinesthetically. These elements are woven into a Complicated yet apparently inevitable (experienced as simple) pattern. This "flow" occurs even in performances that do not build to a climax the way a Pentecostal church service does or the way a performance of Death of a salesman or Macbeth might. For example, the whirling dervishes of Turkey, or the whirling postmodern dances of Laura Dean, or the excruciatingly slow movements, extended over a period of hours, or Robert Wilson's Deafman Glance or Einstien on the Beach each develop patterns of accumulating, if not accelerating, intensities. In fact, dancer Trisha Brown calls some of her most powerful works ‘‘accumulations.’’ ‘‘The accumulation is an additive procedure where movement 1 is presented; start over. Movement 1; 2 is added and start over. 1, 2; 3 is added and start over, etc., until the dance ends’’ (1 975, 29).

Performances like Dean's, Brown’s, and the dervishes’ do not rise to a climax; the accumulation—repetition lifts performers, and often spectators too, into ecstatic trance. In an accumulation, as in repetitious music such as Philip Glass’s, the spectator's mind In nes in to subtle variations is that would not be detectable in a structure where attention is directed to narrative or melodic development. Several times I've organized ‘‘all-night dances’’ to show the power of accumulation and repetition. Groups of from eight to twenty-five persons danced in a simple counterclockwise circle from four to eight hours. Why counterclockwise? It may have to do with left-brain/right-brain differences. Each lime I've participated in this kind of dance I've had, and others to have had, a trancelike experience, au experience of total now where for varying periods the sense of me as an individual, the amount of time passing, my awareness of the environment I was in (outdoors in a field and inside a gymnasium, to name two) were abolished. What was left were a vaguely recollectable sense of moving in the circle and the feel of other persons, the other bodies, to either side of me. This kind of experience is one I describe as ‘‘total low intensity,’’ as distinct from what happened to me in the Pentecostal church or at a pig-kill festival in the highlands of Papua New Guinea where I experienced ‘‘total high intensity" (see Schechner 1 977, 63—98). to both cases my sense of me as Richard Schechner dissolved. Total tow intensity is tropho-tropic: heart rate decreases, as does blood pressure; the pupils are constricted, the FFG is synchronized. There is a tendency toward trance or sleepiness. Total high intensity is ergotropic: heart rate increases, as does blood pressure; the pupils are dilated, the EEG is desynchronized. There is a high level of excitement and arousal. For a full discussion of these states see Lex 1979.

Understanding "intensity of performance" is finding out how a performance builds, accumulates, or uses monotony; how it draws participants in or intentionally shuts them out; how space is designed or managed; how the scenario or script is Used—in short, a detailed examination of the whole performance text. Even more, it is an examination of the experiences and actions of all participants, from the director to the child sleeping in the a audience.

The deer dance at New Pascua seemed to follow an eight-phase intensity pattern. The dance moved from a slow start to a very fast finish of high intensity followed by an abrupt breaking off and starting again. This pattern is analogous to the jo-ha-kyu of Japanese aesthetics.

In the deer dance I saw in 1981, I recorded the following phases. (1) The interlude, or cool down/warm occurred both before the dancing and after, forming a kind of background of ordinariness from which the extraordinary features of the dancing arose. During the interlude everybody relaxed. There was a lot of talking, smoking, drinking coffee, moving around. (2) Young Pascolas begin dancing, without masks, accompanied by two old men playing, a violin and a harp. Pascolas are Yaqui ritual clowns. Often, they wear animal or demon masks—but never a deer mask. Pascolas interact with spectators, making fun of them (as they did of me). Yaqui and scholars agree that Pascolas are ancient, maybe older than the deer dance, both Pascola music is made with European instruments. The water drum, rashers, whistle, and skin drum of the deer dance are Native American. As the young Pascolas dance, only a few Yaqui watch (the scholars were rapt: professional observers). This phase of the dancing was also a kind of public training session. Later, after the deer dance was over, two Less skilled dancers danced in a practice session. Valencia Confirmed that practice does happen this way, in public as well as in private rehearsals. Pascola and deer dance both alternately and together. The dancing and music show the layering of Native American and EuroAmerican elements. Pascola is both older and newer than deer. (3) The beating of the skin drum and blowing of the whistle, the deer dancer begins to put on his mask. The young Pascolas dance with their masks on, but the deer does not dance. There is a mixture of music from violin, harp, skin drum, and whistle. (4) Water drum and raspers begin to play music; the violin and harp stop playing. (5) The deer, masked, dances while at the other end of the ramada the old Pascolas, masked, dance. Here there is a kind of confrontation Between the deer’s "flower world’ naively natural—and something more part-demonic—part - human represented by the Pascolas. During this phase the deer singers sing, the water drums and raspers are sounded, the deer shakes his rattle. Some who wish to see mimetic drama in the deer dance feel that this phase includes a suggestion of the deer being hunted. (6) The eldest, most senior, Pascola dances. The tempo is faster. This is the "full dance" and includes direct confrontation Between deer and Pascola as the Pascola moves from his end of the ramada into the deer’s territory. Here, certainly, mimetic action can be detected by these looking for it. Music is supplied only by the deer’s instruments: water drums, raspers. skin drum, whistle. The harpist is smoking at the back of the ramada; the violinist stands and watches her with a studied detachment. (7) The Pascola withdraws to the back end of the ramada. The deer dances solo. When the Pascola leaves, the skin drum and whistle step, her deer singing, water drums, and raspers continue. It appears that this is the eldest, deepest, most "essentially deer" section. (8) All step. This stepping occurs suddenly—just an end to the song, and that’s it. There is talk in the ramada. The deer removes the mask. Pascola dancers wander. Violin and harp start to tune up for another eight-phased round. Phase 8 = phase 1.

This eight-phased pattern of deer dancing is, as I noted, like the Japanese jo-ha-kyu pattern described by Zeami many centuries ago). There is no question here of diffusion. What we have is my application of a Japanese theory of aesthetics to a native American genre. Anthropologists may bridle at this. They require the participant observer to see with a native eye" and maybe even "feel with a native heart." But one must be very careful that such requirements do not entirely sugar-coat arrogance. Who is to determine what the native eye sees or the native heart feels? I prefer to let the "natives" speak for themselves. For my part, I acknowledge that I am seeing with my own eyes. I also invite others to see me and my culture with their eyes. We are then in a position to exchange our views.

Using aesthetics intercultural relates directly to social theory. For example, Turner's four-part "social drama"—breach, crisis, regressive action, reintegration (or schism)—is derived from the Greece-European model of drama. But, as Turner says, sometimes a phase of a social drama seethes for years and years; sometimes there is no resolution even after a climactic series of events. Great excitement is followed by a sudden breaking of or ceasing of Turmoil; it is not that everything has been resolved as at the end of Hamlet. If Turner had used the jo-ha-kyu model, he might have seen the long festering as jo, the sudden eruption of crisis as ha, and the rapid rise to a climax as kyu. Then, either the crisis is resolved through regressive action (as Turner calls it) or it subsides into another long jo. This pattern does not suit all social dramas, but neither does Turner's four-phase Greece-European scheme. It may be that some social dramas are better looked at in Japanese aesthetic terms than in Greco-European ones, for some social dramas do not resolve themselves but pass From a climax, a kyo, into a New slow phase, jo. Ifmay be that jo-ha-kyu, if some circumstances, is a subset of Turner's redressive action phase.

There are a number of "basic" performance theories originating in different cultures. Each of these might be used singly or in combination as a lens through which to focus both social and aesthetic systems. As Beverly Stoeltje of the University of Texas told me when we discussed these ideas in April 1983, "I have this image of a kaleidoscope of aesthetic systems which can be Turned upon any bit of data, producing different perspectives." A true intercultural perspective is actually a multiplicity of perspectives. Where do these performance theories come from? Is it axiomatic that social life precedes theatrical life? That is of course the Platonic-Aristotelian idea: art imitates life. But maybe the Hindu-Sanskrit view as expressed in the Natvasastra is more appropriate to these postmodern, reflexive limes. Theater and ordinary life are a mõbius strip, each Turning into the other.

At Brooklyn’s Institutional Church of God in Christ on a Sunday late in August 1982, a group of visiting anthropologists and scholars were welcomed by the pastor of the church, Bishop (Carl E. Williams). These outsiders were part of an International Symposium on Ritual and Theatre. Attendance at Institutional was part of a nine—day program that included, in addition to the usual papers and panels, a smorgasbord of performances, including Squat Theatre, an experimental group); A Chorus Line, the Broadway hit; ceremonies conducted by Korean shamans; Kutiyattam, a Sanskrit Theater from Kerala, India; Noh; and a music, dance, and drama group from Nigeria (modern but with many traditional African elements). Obviously, participants received contrasting performative messages.

The Korean shamans and the pastor, deacons, and congregation at the Institutional Church requested, demanded, needed just about everyone present to participate. People got up out of their seats, moved freely in the space, sang and danced in the aisles (at the church) and in a large circle (with the shamans). It was striking how similar the Korean ceremony was to the black church service—although, again, there was no question of diffusion or mutual influencing. to both performances people achieved joy, even ecstasy, by singing and dancing. To each ritual a charismatic leader (the chief shaman, a powerful slim woman, Mme Kim, in her fifties; Bishop Williams, a huge God-the-Father man with powerful hands) was the focus of the ceremony. Strong music made dancing a necessity: the Korean drummers, the black church choirs, gospel singers, and congregation driven by piano, drums, tambourines, and Organ. Mme Kim shared food with everyone, got people out of their seats to dance in circles, performed knife-blade walking on her bare feet. The congregation at Institutional participated by hand-clapping and waving, by shouting and dancing. to both services collecting money and displaying it were key features. The success of the services was known to all by the quantity of money, the intensity of participation, the sheer number of people dancing, singing, clapping, swaying. A Turning point at Institutional came when not only regular members of the congregation but visiting anthropologists and Theater people lined up to have Bishop Williams lay hands on them. At that moment the line Between participants and visitors partly and triumphantly dissolved. The Visitor who went deepest into trance when she was touched was a Korean scholar of shamanism (residing for some years in America). From her own culture she knew what was expected of her in Brooklyn, although these two cultures—Korean, Afro-American—had not previously interacted.

We need to know more about audience-performer interactions. What happens when performances tour, playing to audiences that know nothing of the social or religious contexts of what they are experiencing? Certainly Mme Kim found it a bit baffling to be shamanizing for people who didn’t speak Korean or need her services. On the other hand, I felt at home at Institutional. Tbere, members oft the church urged us to return, which I’ve done. The Christians are proselytizers. But it made a difference that the audience was the one who "toured"—if only to Brooklyn. No doubt touring audiences are changing performances everywhere. It is more than the results of tourism. It is also a function of people who are truly serious about their theatergoing. These days audiences in New Delhi, Nairobi, or New York include people who, fifty years ago, would not "belong" to any of those places. Audiences are increasingly sophisticated and cosmopolitan. Changes in the audience lead to changes in the performances.

Michelle Anderson describes the three forms of vodun she researched recently in Haiti: a ritual/social form for Haitians "only" (though she was there), a social/theatrical form for Haitians and tourists, and a theatrical/ commercial form for tourists "only" (though Some Haitians studying these different kinds of events were there). Anderson says these three forms taken together compose "authentic" vodun.

What makes these changes—what keeps vodun "living"—is the changing audience. And that’s what could kill it too, for there is only so much change that a genre can absorb before it is no longer itself’.

Generally, scholars have paid attention to the show, not to the Whole seven-part sequence of training, workshops, rehearsals, warm-ups, performance, cool-down, and aftermath. Theater people have investigated training, rehearsals, and performances but have slighted workshops, warm-up, cool-down, and aftermath. Just as the phases of the public performance itself make a system, so the whole ‘performance sequence" makes a larger, more inclusive system. In some genres and cultures, one or the other of the parts of the sequence is emphasized.

In Noh, for example, the extensive training of the shite traditionally starts when he is five years old. This training, from the very beginning, consists of learning parts of actual Noh performances. Some aspects of the performances the way the feet move, the placement of the spine, the style of chanting are constant from role to role. In learning the specifics of this or that role, the neophyte also learns the basic principles of Noh. Slowly, the learner accumulates enough concrete information to perform simple roles.

In his Kyui, Zeami outlines nine levels of acting, divided into three groups (see also chapter 5). Zeami advises the young actor to begin with the middle

three levels. "The mark of surface design [naturalism, sheer imitation] is considered the first gateway on the path of study of the nine levels (Zeami in Nearman 1978, 314). After the performer masters the middle levels, he scales the highest three levels. Only after learning these does he descend to the first three levels, the most primitive and gross roles. These roles, says Zeami, require a skill that only a master shite can provide: the ability to balance the grotesqueness of a role with the subtlety of how it is performed. Only after a shite has mastered the sublimity of the highest three levels is he equipped to descend to the lowest roles. This is still another aspect of incomplete transformation: in roles of the lowest levels the mask is gross while the partly revealed face behind it is sublime. Zeami, sadly, notes that "even today [the fifteenth century] in our art, there are fellows who treat the lower three levels as the First gateway to the study of the Way and perform accordingly. This is not the proper route." (1978, 330).

Zeami’s secrets of training were kept in the Kanze family—passed down through the generations largely through oral transmission—until this century. These teachings form the core of the Kanze performance style. Such an emphasis of detailed training has made rehearsals and workshops in the Euro-American sense unnecessary in Noh. to a traditional Noh performance—still widely adhered to today—the shite summons the other groups of performers, all of whom have practiced separately the drummers, flute player, waki (second role, unmasked), and kyogen (interlude) and explains to them what he intends to do in the performance. He may point out or even demonstrate some mai (dance movement) if he is planning anything unusual. But the only time the whole Noh will be done is during the performance itself. The shite and chorus compose one performative unit, the waki another, the drummers another, and se on. That these radically separate groups of specialists can, during a performance itself, work together as a superb ensemble shows Western theater people that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Sometimes, as in classical Indian Theater, preparations before a performance are very important. This seems to have been true in India from the very start. The Natyasastra devotes all of chapter 5 to "the preliminaries of a play.’’ These include playing drums and stringed instruments as a way of telling the public that the performance is to begin; doing various rituals honoring the gods; performing special kinds of introductory dances; and making circumambulating of the stage. Today, were all these preliminaries performed, they would take several hours; usually they are abbreviated. Before the onstage preliminaries, there are those in the green room. In Kuttiyattam (the most ancient surviving Indian form, dating at least to the tenth century) putting on the costume and applying the ornate makeup to the body and face take at least two hours; ditto for Kathakali. Each day before Ramlila, the boys who play the main roles rehearse for two hours and Spend another two getting into costumes and makeup. But the men who play roles they’ve performed annually for years hardly rehearse at all. By way of contrast, Actors’ Equity, the American actors’ union, has a rule requiring actors to be at the Theater one-half hour before curtain. Some actors come in earlier, but many do not. Jazz musicians tune up offstage with the audience present. Squat Theatre does not rehearse, train, or warm up. Members discuss the exact procedures of the performance, construct its physical environment, and wait for actual performances before doing what they have planned. This method, they say, gives each night’s performance freshness (see Schechner 1978).

Discussing the cool-down from performances is more difficult because documentation is scant. The cool-down ought to be investigated from the

point of view of both performers and spectators. The spectators, having experienced the performance, have been affected by It. After Ramlilas of Ramnagar the boys who play Rama, Sita, and Rama’s brothers are carried back to where they live for the month of performances. Except when performing their feet are never permitted to touch the ground while they wear their full regalia. Once their costumes are removed, they eat a special meal rich with whole milk, yogurt, fruit, nuts, and sweets. Soon enough they are asleep. More ordinary performers remove their costumes, eat, and socialize; some recite prayers or go to a temple for puja. There is no prescribed behavior that everyone follows. The audience also breaks into several parties. Many go straight home by the most efficient means. I don’t know what they do. A few have rented rooms in Ramnagar for the Ramlílas month. These nemis— faithful, wholly devoted spectators—may read the Ramcharitmanas, sing devotional songs, or in other ways continue their worship of Rama. A number of people gather in front of small shrines of the road back to the center of Ramnagar and chant kirtans with sadhus whose singing fills the night. Many spectators board rowboats for the thirty—minute voyage across the Ganga back to Varanasi. While on the sacred river they sing songs about Rama, Sita, and Hanuman. These activities keep the day’s lila firmly in heart and mind.

In Bali it is just as important to get a dancer out of trance as to put him in. Smoke is inhaled, holy water sprinkled, and sometimes a chicken is sacrificed. At Institutional and other trance—inducing churches, black or white, when a brother or sister falls out’’ (goes into trance a group of friends and relatives gathers around, keeps the transer from Falling or in any way injuring himself or Others, and accompanies him back to his seat. There, often, the transer is fanned, has his brow mopped: the heat of the religious ecstasy is reduced. I've experimented with cool—down exercises group breathing, the passing of water, Some quiet talking about the performance (nothing critical, more in the way of individuals sharing experiences).

In theaters around the world, performers after a show eat, drink, talk, and celebrate. A newcomer to actors wonders how so much energy is left for these after-the-Theater bouts. But truly these activities don’t come "after" but are "part of" the performance and should be studied as such. In many cultures, taking food and drink, sharing memories of what happened, is either a concluding part of the performance or part of after-the-performance ceremonies. It appears that a wholehearted performance literally "empties" the performers and one way they restore themselves (or are restored) to ordinary life is by being refilled with food and drink, sacred or profane. Or, conversely, the performance so fills performers with energy and excitement that they need time to let it all out in exuberant sociality.

Aftermath is even less systematically discussed than cool-down. The aftermath is the tong-term consequences or follow-through of a performance. Aftermath includes the changes in states of being that result from an initiatory performance; or the slow merging of performer with a role he plays for decades (see chapter 3); or the reviews and criticism that so deeply influence some performances and performers; or theorizing and scholarship—such as this book. At the distance of’ reviews, criticism, theory. and scholarship careers are built not in the Arts and rituals of performing but in commenting of performances. Of course, aftermath feeds back into performing—and the theories of practitioners such as Brecht. Stanislavski, and Zeami for examples are especially instrumental.

In limiting their investigations mostly to what happens during the performance itself. scholars are following modern Euro-American theatrical convention: you don’t go backstage unless you’re part of the show. The history of the development of the Western p1ayhouse has been to reposition an event that was largely open, outdoors, and public into one that is closed, indoors and private.

As I noted earlier, the seven phases of performances: training, Workshop, rehearsal, warm-ups or preparations immediately before performing, the performance itself, cool-down. and aftermath—are not emphasized equally in all cultures. Traditional performances—the Mass, Purim speils, Noh, and so on—usually demand training but very little rehearsal. It’s obvious: If you play the same role over and over again, as in Ramlilas, or if there is an orderly, predictable progression of roles that lie before you over the years, as in Noh, the idea of figuring out what to do beforehand is unnecessary—doubly unnecessary if the mise-en-scène is fixed by tradition. But in cultures, like the Euro-American, where "originality" is prized (so prized that works are praised simply for being "New"), rehearsals are often more important than training. Most American actors took forward to the time when they are "finished" training. Lip service is paid to lifelong training, but in fact only a small fraction of actors continue training after leaving acting School. Dancers are more likely to keep training—probably because a dancer without a flexible body is washed up. But how many dancers are really "in" their training. If a dancer could keep her body fit without training, would she still train? On the other hand, most performers enjoy rehearsals. That’s where ‘creative work" gets done. Characterizations are built, choreography invented or learned, the many elements that compose a performance are tried out. How different from Noh. In Euro-American Theater it is not so important that an artist be shaped to conform to a particular sort of performative expectations already laid down by tradition. It is more important that the artist’s "instrument" ( — body and soul) be able to flexibly adapt to this or that temporary grouping of people and with them swiftly and efficiently release feelings and, along with the choreographer or director, invent or call upon a stock of movements, gestures, voices, and emotions. If this is accomplished, maybe audiences will believe that this temporary group is an "ensemble."

Since around 1960, and especially in experimental Theater and dance, a situation has arisen where both script and mise-en-scêne are "researched" and composed in a special performative phase between training and rehearsal called workshop. In Theater that comes from workshop, there is no preexistent script—or there are too many scripts ("materials" or "sources"). The words do not determine everything else but are knitted into a performance text consisting of many braided strands: lighting, costumes, scenography, iconograpby(the arrangement of the performers in space), Theater architecture, music, and so on. There are also many workshops that do not lead to public performances. Skills as diverse as t’ai chi or mask making are learned. Or, as in the "paratheatrical" work of Grotowski and others, an intense personal experience occurs. This kind of work borders on the "human potential movement," a movement that has taken a lot of its technique from Theater, dance, and music.

Looking at the whole seven-phase performance sequence, I find a pattern analogous to initiation rites. A performance involves a separation, a transition, and an incorporation (Van Gennep [1908] 1960). Each of these phases is carefully marked. Like initiations people are transformed permanently, whereas in most performances the transformations are temporary (transportations). Like initiations, performances "make" one person into another. Unlike initiations, performances usually see to it that the performer gets his own self back. To use Van Gennep’s categories, training, workshop, rehearsal, and warm-ups are preliminary, rites of separation. The performance itself is liminal, analogous to the rues of transition. Cool—down and aftermath are postliminal, rites of incorporation. These phases of the ritual process may be applied to performance in another way too.

When workshops and rehearsals are used together, they constitute a model of the ritual process (see also chapters 2 and 6). Workshops, which deconstruct ordinary experience, are like rules of separation and transition while rehearsals, which build up, or construct, New cultural items, are like rites of transition and incorporation. Workshops and rehearsals converge of the process of transition. One of the advantages for performance theorists of Turner's Talmud on Van Gennep is the extremely suggestive flexibility of the ritual process as Turner interprets it.

What is "performance knowledge"? For too long, in Theater at least, performance knowledge has been identified with knowing the great dramatic texts (from Aeschylus through Shakespeare to Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, and Brecht and on to Beckett). What performers and directors did was acknowledged but segregated. Then, in the sixties, came a time of the ascendancy of the practical—in America a number of "conservatory schools of Theater were formed. Students there learn the crafts of the stage but little literature and less theory. But performance knowledge is integrative.

Patrice Pavis in his Languages of the Stage identifies six kinds of texts used in the Theater:

1. Dramatic text: the text composed by the author that the director is responsible for staging..

2. Theatrical text: the text in a concrete situation of enunciation in a concrete area before an audience.

3. Performance: the ensemble of stage systems used, including the text, considered prior to the examinations of the production of meaning through their interrelationships.

4. Mise-en-scene: the interrelationship of the systems of performance particularly the link Between text and performance.

5. Theatre event: the totality of the unfolding production of the mise-en-scene and of its reception by the public, and the exchanges between the two.

6. performance text: the mise-en-scene of a reading and any possible account made of this reading by the spectator. 1982, 1601

This is so because ii is by now very clear that a performance is much different and more complex than the "staging of a Playtext." Both historically in terms of the origins of performance and interculturally in terms of the performances now going on, the staging of written texts comprises but a small fraction of the world’s theater activity. Speaking of what might have been the world’s earliest theater, the events occurring within the paleolithic caves of southwest Europe, 1 wrote in 1973:

Thus dramatic literature arose at specific places in specific historical circumstances. Nonliterary, non-written-down theater continues to thrive. Sometimes, as in Noh and Kathakali, an extensive theatrical literature exists but is learned as part of its actual use in performance.

Performance knowledge belongs to oral traditions. How such traditions are passed on in various cultures and in different genres is of great importance. Some surprising parallels exist, for example. between the way professional sports in America and traditional performances in Asia are coached and taught. Sports are tine examples of nonverbal performance—dramatic and kinesthetic yet not "dance" or "theater" in the classical, modern, or postmodern sense. The coaches of sports teams are usually former players. They personally give their "secrets" to younger players. Older players, even when they can’t play anymore are respected for their records; participants and fans alike delight in anecdotes about the old great ones. Some of these ancestors are enshrined in "halls of fame," and some are kept on as coaches or in the front office. This is not so different from what happens to the most respected performers of Ramlila. Noh. Kathakali, Korean dance, and so on throughout Asia. Old performers teach. some are designated "living national treasures," and roles are set aside for them to play.

Elsewhere I have discussed the problem of transmission of performance knowledge as it applies to the American avant-garde (see Schechner 1982b). when theater people know more about how rituals and traditional performances are transmitted the problem will be less intractable. Some progress is being made. Western theater and dance workers by the hundreds have studied Asian and African performance techniques. I know mostly about those who have gone to India. Japan. and Indonesia. What’s important about these contacts is not the direct taking of Asian ways—these imitations can be embarrassing—but the adaptation to American circumstances of underlying patterns, the very thought of performance: the master-disciple relationship; to direct manipulation of the body as a means of transmitting performance knowledge; respect for "body learning" as distinct from "head learning"; also, a regard for the performance text as a braiding of various performance "languages," none of which can always claim primacy. ("Languages" is in quotation marks because I am suspicious of the linguistic model as applied to performance. I think Aristotle was closer to being right when he identified "action" [praxis] at the core of performance: a very dense, dynamic system of shifting valences and twisting helixes. If performance theorists are in need of a guiding metaphor, we are more likely to find it in particle physics or biology than in linguistics.)

Of course the roads East-West/South-North are crowded with traffic going both ways. Hundreds of Africans. Asians. and Latin Americans have come to Europe and America to study performance. At first these people mostly worked in the Euro-American mainstream, and they brought back to their cultures versions of modern Western theater and dance and music. But, more recently, many non-Westerners have participated in experimental performance. This has led to the development of intercultural companies and a marvelously complicated exchange of techniques and concepts that can no longer he easily located as belonging to this culture or that one. This dialogue relating modern, traditional, and postmodern elements even takes place within single nations. A conference held in Calcutta in 1983 focused on the relationship between Indian classical dance-drama genres and the modern theater. Actors, dancers, musicians, and scholars assembled from all over the world. Theater director Mohan Agashe of Pune, India, pointed out that the relationship among genres and cultures within India itself cannot simply be one of taking this dance step, that rhythm, um that story but must be something more like metabolism where deep learning takes place, eventuating in artistic works that may not at all look like what they have come from. Euro-American theater is full of examples of the metabolic process Agashe is talking about. The puppets of Mabou Mines’s Shaggy Dog Animation combine Japanese bunraku with Euro-American vaudeville puppetry as typified by Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy. The masks of lslene Pindar’s Night Shadows were crafted by Balinese artists for her Balinese-American Dance Company. These masks reflect Balinese interpretations of an American choreographer's ideas—an American who has studied in Bali. John Emigh’s Little Red Riding Shawl uses Balinese topeng masks and movements in telling a story very much in the American vein, In Emigh’s production of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, the basic dramaturgy (as well as the masks) reflects his work in Bali. Ron Jenkins studied clowning at the Barnum and Bailey Clown College and in Bali, where he actually performed with a Balinese troupe. In his One Horse Show Jenkins integrated his experiences in such a way that the surface appears very American but the underlying patterns combine cultures. Julie Taymor’s masks for not only hem own shows but also Liz Swados’s Haggadah are similarly metabolized from Taymom’s experiences in Java. Phillip Zarrilli teaches the Indian martial art kalarippayatt as basic performance training. There is a good model for this: many years ago much of kalarippayatt was taken into the training regime of Kathakali. Zarrilli also uses kalarippayatt ín his own productions. When he and I collaborated on Richard’s Lear in 1982, kalarippayatt was not only au essential part of the training hut also important in the staging of two fight scenes. The list goes on. Some work is more wholly metabolized than others. My point is that these new kinds of performances also call into existence new means of training, which means new ways and means of transmitting performance knowledge—new in the West but not new to Asia or Africa.

Techniques of transmission of performance knowledge are a strong basis for exchange among theater people and anthropologists. Theater people know about training; it is expected that teachers of theater be able also to practice it, which means that the teachers have been trained as actors, directors, scenographers, costumers, et cetera. Anthropologists are trained observers; and some anthropologists—not enough, but a growing number— also participate in the cultures they observe. Theater people can help anthropologists identify what to look for in a training or performance situation; and anthropologists can help theater people see performances within the context of specific social systems.

Evaluation runs from totally subjective statements like ‘I enjoyed that" to detailed semiotic analysis; from a teacher’s pointing out what was useful in even a failed performance to the enthusiastic response of a sophisticated spectator—or the confused response of an ignorant spectator. In Asian performances the evaluation of a performance is actually part of the performance itself. Before the days of newspaper critics there were patrons. A performance of Noh or Kathakali is Supposed to be as good as those seeing it "deserve." A person who sponsors, or even attends, a Noh drama is supposed to have considerable knowledge about it. The connoisseur knows what he is being offered and can react appropriately. The comparison to Americans’ attitude toward sports is again instructive. Spectators of sports know the rules of the game, and its finer points of play. They know the players and their records; they know each team’s history; they debate management decisions from outfield strategy to finances. in short, every aspect of the game, its playing, and its players comes under the heat of informed opinion. Excellence is applauded, bad play booed. Sports spectators are connoisseurs. If theater were to attract such an audience, things would get better quick.

The only really effective criticism is that hacked up by more practice. During each night’s performance of anything I direct, I make notes which are then shared the next day with the performers. The notes always demand rehearsal, which is a continuous process. Slowly, over months or even years, some productions achieve a oneness through a process of doing, seeing, evaluating, criticizing, and redoing.

These six points of contact need to be broadened and deepened. Anthropological and theatrical methods are converging. An increasing number Of people in both disciplines are crossing boundaries. Grotowski, Brook, Barba, Turner, Turnbull, and others are working specifically and concretely in ways that are intercultural and interdisciplinary.

Since 1970, Brook has directed his International Center for Theater Research in Paris. His company includes performers from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. His field trips have taken him and his group to all these continents exchanging techniques and research material for a variety of productions ranging from The 1k (based on Colin Turnbull’s Mountain People), L‘Os (based on an African tale by Birago Diop), and The conference of the Birds (based on a Sufi story) to the not-yet-finished version of the Mahahharata.

But were there actual exchanges? Or was the trip more of a chance for Brook’s group to explore irnprovisatory acting techniques while enjoying local hospitality?

Another time Brook’s group was camping in a forest. Children appeared and told them that in a nearby village there was a celebration going on. The actors went.

It is not always so idyllic. Brook—and others doing similar work—has been accused of acting arrogantly, even imperialistically.

But this having been said, I still sympathize with Brook’s fundamental impulse (sometimes imperfectly carried through), which is also the impulse of Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, and Victor and Edith Turner, as well as others, both Euro-Americans and non-Westerners:

As Brook observes, "the body as such becomes a working source." Whether grounded in neurobiology or in universally recognized displays of emotions, the affective aspects of theater are less in need of translation than literature.

Barba, in his own way, is extending Grotowski’s work of developing actor training and mise-en-scêne.

Turner did for anthropology what Barba is doing for theater. Turner’s work spans several decades and covers vast conceptual areas. From the sixties 1w was interested in ritual-as-performance and more recently in what he called "performing ethnography" (plate 6). Collaborating with his wife, Edith, Turner has

Over the past several years the Turners staged with their students a typical Virginia marriage, the midwinter ceremony of the Mohawk of Canada, an Ndembu girl’s puberty rue, and the hamatsa dance of the sacred winter ceremonials of the Kwakiutl.

From all this experience the Turners carne to several interesting conclusions. They are against staging rituals and myths because these "have their

source and raison d’être in the ceaseless flow of social life" and should not be willy-nilly be ripped from their contexts (1982, 47—48).

The Turners go on to say how important rehearsals are, as well as the sharing of the particular foods associated with the culture being studied. Of course they also emphasize the aftermath: "At least one session should be allocated to a close review of all aspects of the performance seen in retrospect" (1982, 48). This is one way the "field work" of the performed ethnography gets "written up" in the more cognitive language of academic discourse (the seminar, the term paper).

It would be good to see some of Barba’s ideas joined with those of the Turners. I mean: How about emphasizing not only the cognitive and experiential aspects of the ethnographies enacted hut also the kinesthetic—how the body is handled, held, restrained, released? This would put into the bodies of the student performers a living sense of what it is to move "as if" one were the other. And this would then involve the performers not only in rehearsals but in training. At the symposium in New York in Angus! 1982 I noted the reluctance of some anthropologists to participate in the workshops that were

part of the program. In early September I had the experience of working directly with Noh shite Takabayashi Koji who, along with several other Noh artists, came from the New York symposium to Cornell University where they offered a three-day workshop). Doing the movements of Noh concretely— even for such a brief period—told me more in my body than pages of reading.

What’s more, when I returned to the reading, to concepts like jo-ha-kyu or ko-shi, I had a firmer sense of what these concepts were. It is this kind of in the-body work that brings the Turners and Barba together.

Other anthropologists have taken to drama. At the University of Chicago McKim Marriott stages a "game" with one of his classes through which they act out the social world of the Indian caste system as it might operate in a village. Marriott also staged in May 1982 a Hindi folkplay, Rup-Basant (which he translated into English) as part of his class on South Asia. The audience played the role of Indian villagers. Marriott reports concerning this experience:

Colin Turnbull not only worked with Peter Brook on adapting his Mountain People into The 1k but has continued at George Washington University to explore the relationship between anthropology and drama (see Garner and Turnbull 1979). Grotowski has long been interested in intercultural performance. His Polish Laboratory Theater was among the first to metabolize nonEuropean influences. Grotowski has been to Asia several limes beginning in 1956. He has also worked with aesthetic and ritual performers from Haiti, Mexico, India, and elsewhere. Grotowski’s intercultural work—including his latest project, "objective drama"—is discussed in chapter 5. All of these experiments, and more not mentioned, are harbingers. The six "points of contact" are highly charged nodes attracting people from anthropology and theater. Around these nodes—what Turner would call a "liminoid" Field—is being formed something in-between and postmodern.

But why these specific six points of contact and not others? These specific points may not exhaust what could be defined, but they do mark out a very concrete and coherent field that is of deep interest to f)performance theorists. Who performers are, how they achieve their Temporary or permanent transformations, what role the audience plays—these are the key questions not about dramatic literature but about the living performance event when looked at from the viewpoint of the human beings involved in the performance. Other (questions could be developed that would concentrate on scenography, uses of space, costumes, props and implements of performance, and the various layerings of technology from puppets to holography. But anthropology, as the name implies, has focused on human action; and although these other (Questions are important, and clearly derive from human action, I am proposing points of contact that can be taken up next, and that seem to me to be central. The remaining three points—the whole performance sequence, the transmission of performance knowledge, and evaluations—are harder to categorize. They constitute particular areas of difficulty within the world I live in as a theater director. In a sense, 1 am looking for help in understanding these processes—a holistic grasp of the subject of performance.

the concrete means by which nonliterary, nonlinear knowledge is passed on, and the relationship between artists and ritualists and the societies-at-large they inhabit.

I turn to anthropology, not as to a problem-solving science but because I sense a convergence of paradigms. Just as theater is anthropologizing itself, so anthropology is being theatricalized. This convergence is the historical occasion for all kinds of exchanges. The convergence of anthropology and theater is part of a larger intellectual movement where the understanding of human behavior is changing from quantifiable differences between cause and effect, past and present, form and content, et cetera (and the linear modes of analyses that explicate such a world view) to an emphasis on the deconstruction/reconstruction of actualities: the processes of training, editing, and rehearsing; the making and manipulating of strips of behavior—what I call "restored behavior."

In each chapter of this book I deal with one or more aspects of these points of contact. I turn the problems they evoke over and over. I am far from

"solving" any problem. In fact, my aim is closer to one of deep meditation: a consideration of the talmudic complexity and multivocality of this, that, and another permutation of the performance paradigm. we accept our species as sapiens and fabricans: ones who think and make. We are in the process of learning how humans are also ludens and performans: ones who play and perform

1. The symposium was held o New York, August 23—3 1 , 1982. It was sponsored by the Wunner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in association with the American Theatre Association, the Asian Cultural Council, the Asia Society, the International Theatre Institute, and the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. The symposium brought theater practitioners from Asia, Africa, and Euro-America together with theater scholars and anthropologists. Sessions included demonstrations of training and performance techniques a~ well as theoretical and historical discussions. In Calcutta, India, January 2—11, 1983, a similar conference studying the relationship between traditional Indian dance and modern theater was held. Delegates from Asia, Euro-America, Latin America, and the Middle East attended. Performances and discussions, were augmented by many demonstrations of various training, workshop, and rehearsal techniques. For a summary of the meeting at Calcutta, See Martin and Schechner 1983.

2. Squat's techniques, themes, and unique use of the street outside its theater is discussed in Schechner 1978, 1982b, and chapter 7, herein; Shank and Shank 1 978; and Shank 1982,

179—89.