Anne Bogart on Ritual

During her brief tenure as Artistic Director of The Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, R.I., Anne Bogart worked hard to drum up ticket sales. As she spoke at many local institutions hoping to generate an audience, she began to wonder was it was that attracted people to the theater. In her book and then, you act: making art in an unpredictable world [Routledge, 2007], Bogart writes about "the seven compelling forces inherent to theater that attract people to it: empathy, entertainment, ritual, participation, spectacle, education and alchemy."
Since we have focused on ritual in our rehearsals, I'll summarize her section on ritual (pgs. 71 - 74):
* Elias Canetti in his book Crowds and People asks, "Why do people do go church?" and responses: "Not pray to God, but rather to stand, sit and kneel simultaneously." The ritual of theater begins longs before the play starts.
* For an performer as well as for the audience, the ritual of theater extends forwards and backwards in time. The ritual of theater for the audience includes buying the tickets, the dressing up, and the conversations that ensue afterward.
* Rituals can be, but not necessarily must be, lead by specially qualified person such as a priest or sorcerer.
* Rituals = a form of communication. Two elements are needed for this communication: an "emitter," the performer, and a "receptor,"the audience.
* Ritual, like performance, is a liminal event. The word liminal is derived from the Greek limnos meaning threshold. The stage is a liminal space which is "neither useful or productive in any concrete or materialistic fashion. It is a transitional space, neither practical nor constructive, in the realm of day to day living." It is, like a church or any place of ritual, a place where symbolic acts are carried out.
*"The word tragedy originated in the Greek word tragodiai, "goat songs." Originally to purge human failings, goats were sacrificed on alters while people watched...the actor is the emblematic or stand-in martyr for all those watching. He or she suffers the goat's fate in symbolic way."
* The need for confession is as essential a need as food and shelter. Is drama an extension of the human need to confess?
* "It is this unspoken religious dimension that gives theater its depth."
* "A shared space between the "emitter" and "receptor" is an intrinsic ingredient to ritualistic action." Ms Bogart reminds us that it wasn't until Richard Wagner that theaters were lit in such a way that there was only light on the stage. Previously, the audience and performers were equally lit.