The Nature of Drama
In his Poetics (Aristotle, 1965), Aristotle describes the ritualistic beginnings
of the dramatic arts:
"Both tragedy and comedy had their first beginnings in improvisation.
The one originated with those who led the dithyramb, the other with the leaders
of the phallic songs which still survive today as traditional institutions
in many of our cities." (Aristotle, 1965:36)
"As Alan Little suggests in his book Myth, Society and Attic Drama (Little,
1942), this originary aspect of Greek theatre, inevitably, entailed a merging
of religious, social and psychosocial imperatives that can be seen as missing
in the Christian paradigm (Little, 1942: 70). The theatre's place as a crucible
of cathartic social importance can, in some senses, be seen to be abandoned
with the onset of clearly defined delineations between the secular world of
Art and the religious world of the Judeo-Christian Church.
"In this essay I would like to look at the works of a number of leading playwrights
and dramatic theorists and examine the ways that they attempt to reassert
the importance of myth and ritual in the theatre and the degree to which drama,
itself, mirrors the functions and processes of mythology and religion.
"Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and Its Double (Artaud, 1985) stands as one
of the most revealing and intriguing texts on the nature of theatre written
in the Twentieth Century (Knapp, 1980). As Derrida suggests in his essay The
Theatre of Cruelty And the Closure of Representation (Derrida, 2004), at its
heart, Artaud's work represents a deconstruction of the very relationship
that exists between author, actor and audience:
" "(For Artaud) Western theatre has been separated from the force of its essence,
removed from its affirmative essence, its vis affirmativa. And this dispossession
occurred from its origin on, is the very movement of origin, of birth as death."
(Derrida, 2004: 293)
"For Derrida, as for Artuad, the real essence of theatre resides in the spectacle
not the speech. In his essay Mise En Scene and Metaphysics (Artaud, 1985),
for instance, Artaud stresses the importance of production over text, eradicating
the hierarchical dominance of author over actor . For Artaud and the theatre
of cruelty, the true meaning of theatre was in the mise en scene, the spectacle
that is, at once, violent and disturbing, as described in Theatre and the
Plague (Artaud, 1985) or unrepeatable as in No More Masterpieces (Artaud,
1985):
" "I suggest we ought to return through theatre to the idea of a physical
knowledge of images, a means of inducing trances, just as Chinese medicine
knows the points of acupuncture over the whole extent of the human anatomy,
down to our most sensitive functions." (Artaud, 1985: 61)
"The unrepeatable cathartic violence espoused here recalls Aristotle's assertions
on the social function of tragedy. It is only through an embracing of myth
and ritual, asserts Artaud, that the true artistic function of theatre can
be realised and Artaud's plays and screenplays like the short but highly visually
arresting The Spurt of Blood (Artaud, 1988), in which reality and nightmare
merge into a play that is, in some senses, all mise en scene reflects this.
"However, there are many modern playwrights that also concern themselves with
the place of ritual in, not only, contemporary theatre but also the wider
social consciousness; one of the most obvious being, of course, Peter Shaffer.
Shaffer's plays constantly attempt to reassert the importance of ritual and
myth as valid discourses, in both Equus (Shaffer, 1993) and The Royal Hunt
Of the Sun (Shaffer, 1964) there is a constant comparison and evaluation of
the bipolar binaries of reason and un-reason, Christian and pagan, spirit
and body.
"From its first opening scenes, Equus consciously apes the Attic dramas that,
obviously, form a part of its cultural foundation. The descriptions of the
horses in the Notes give us the first notions we have of this:
" "On their heads are tough masks made of alternating bands of silver wire
and leather: their eyes are outlined by leather blinkers. The actor's own
heads are seen beneath them: no attempt should be made to conceal them." (Shaffer,
1993: xxiii)
"We are reminded here not only of the Chorus in Attic theatre but also the
Japanese Noh plays (Waley, 1988) and the costumes worn by the Balinese actors
written about by Artaud (Artaud, 1985: 36-49). Shaffer, straightaway centres
his play within a history of ritual rather than mimetic drama, the actors
that play the horses in Equus mirror, not so much actual animals as their
totem. The audience, in this sense, becomes not merely observers of a drama
but participants in a shared artistic creation, much like those attending
a rite or ceremony where the importance of the actions and images are based
in myth and ritual rather than mimesis.
"Of course, the plot to Equus also reflects this sense. Dysart can be seen
very much as a dramatic equal to Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun: the
Western rational man, whose views and belief systems are questioned and, eventually,
over thrown by the vital energy of paganism.
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