1.
Describe
the origins of theatre and how it relates to ritual in at least one ancient
Indo-European culture. (300 words minimum)
Theatre is
defined as “dramatic quality or effectiveness” or “dramatic literature” (Merriam-Webster) . By this definition, theatre requires drama to
be effective. So what is Drama? Drama is “a piece of writing that tells a
story and is performed on a stage” (Merriam-Webster) .
Theatre is something that I have typically thought of as a bardic art
from the Medieval or Renaissance time periods.
However, theatre has existed for much longer than this. In fact, ancient Greek and Indian cultures present
us with examples of early plays and dramas from over 1000 years before William
Shakespeare was born.
Theatre
played an important role in Greek festivals.
Theatrical performances were used as a form of both ritual and entertainment
for the people, often acting out the myths that the festival was dedicated
to. Tragedies were some of the earliest
theatrical works written, dating as far back as 500 BC. Three of the most well known playwrights from
ancient Greece are Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus (Robinson) . Sophocles wrote numerous dramas, including
Oedipus Rex, which initially used only three actors and 15 members of the
chorus to tell the tale. These
limitations made the performances very stripped down and personal. Additionally, most Greek tragedies were based
on either mythology or historical events, often exploring their psychological
motivations and search for the meaning of life (Robinson) .
Theatre
also had an early start in ancient India with the oldest fragments of Sanskrit
plays date to the first century AD (Richmond, Zarrilli and Swann 27) . There are several different plays and dramas,
but some of the most popular are the romantic dramas written by Kalidasa. Kalidasa was a Sanskrit poet and dramatist
that lived between the 4th and 5th century AD. There are
three plays that are attributed to Kalidasa:
Malavikka and Agnimitra, Urvashii Won Through Valor, and Shakuntalaa
Recognized (Malaiya) . Each of these plays is several acts long and
includes a hero and heroine, along with the entertaining tale. There is little social commentary, and these
performances seem to be aimed at entertainment over education.
Theatre
played an important role in both ancient Greek and Vedic societies, providing
entertainment during festivals and other important events. Theatrical performances within both of these
cultures were broken into several acts and often included both heroes and
heroines. However, many of the Greek theatre
performances focused on mythology and historical events, while several of the
Vedic plays were more relaxed romantic dramas with little social or historical
commentary. There are exceptions on
both sides of that though, with some Greek dramas with little historical
narratives, and Vedic plays, such as Mahabhaṣya, which was a commentary on
Sanskrit grammar rules (Meyer, Burn and Cotton) .
2.
Explain
"intentional movement" and why it is important in ritual. Include how
movement can both aid and detract from the ritual experience. (100 words
minimum)
Intentional movement can be a very
useful and important tool in ritual.
Intentional movement is the idea that all movement and gestures made
during the performance of a ritual should be done deliberately, with intent and
purpose. From the moment you process
into a ritual space, to the time when you close the rite, the way you move will
have an impact on the ritual itself.
Intentional movements can show confidence
in your performance while also guiding the focus of other ritual
participants. It is important that these
movements and gestures are large enough to be seen, and not “half-heartedly” (Thomas, The Well-Trained Ritualist) . If you are going to
do a movement, do it completely and purposefully. Additionally, if all the participants of a
ritual are using the same intentional movements, the ritual will look more unified
and can help with the flow of energy.
Simultaneously, unintentional movement, such as fidgeting, can be
distracting to the celebrants of a ritual, causing them to be less focused on
the ritual and instead focused on the movements you are doing.
3.
Explain
your understanding of the circles of concentration. (200 words minimum)
In terms of ritual performance,
circles of concentration are the various areas that a good ritualist should
keep focus on during a ritual in order to perform effective group rituals. Rev. Kirk Thomas identifies four of these
circles of concentration: the ritualist, other ritualists in the rite, the
attendees, and the otherworlds (Thomas, Concentration in Ritual) .
The first circle of concentration is
what Rev. Thomas calls “the critic.”
This circle encompasses being aware of yourself and where you are within
the ritual space. It also includes
acknowledging the little voice, or critic, in your head that tells you when
things are going wrong or working well.
While this voice may seem distracting, it can also help you to know when
you need to change your performance to make the ritual more effective (Thomas, Concentration in Ritual) .
The second circle of concentration is
“the connection.” This circle focuses on
the connection you build with the other ritualists participating in the
rite. This includes two separate aspects
of connection. First, the emotional connection you have with the other
ritualists, trusting that they will help you perform the best ritual
possible. Secondly, the physical awareness
of them in the ritual space, to keep you safe (Thomas, Concentration in Ritual) .
The third circle of concentration is
“awareness.” This circle spotlights the
importance of the folks attending the ritual.
Maintaining focus on the folks helps you to build a connection and
energy flow with them. It also helps you
to sense drops in energy and to realize when someone cannot hear or see what is
happening in the ritual. Concentrating
on the folk can help provide a more positive ritual experience for everyone
involved (Thomas, Concentration in Ritual) .
The fourth and final circle of
concentration is the “boundaries.” This
is the circle that embraces the Otherworlds and allows us to best interface
with the Kindreds (Thomas, Concentration in Ritual) .
4.
Describe
the advantages and disadvantages of the three ritual configurations
(proscenium, thrust, and round). Note how a ritualist can maximize the
advantages and minimize the disadvantages of each configuration. Offer at least
one type of ritual that would work best in each configuration. (100 words min.
for each configuration)
Proscenium
Proscenium
is the type of layout most often found in modern churches. The audience sits in rows facing a single
direction, where the ritual will take place. In this type of layout, it is
important for the ritualist to face out toward the audience in order for them
to be heard throughout the ritual space.
Turning your back to the audience can make it very difficult for the
audience to hear your words, while also limiting their view of your actions.
This type of layout works well for weddings as it allows for the focus of
everyone to be facing toward the ceremony itself. There are not often many participants during
a wedding ceremony, and typically any participants can be seated in the front
row to make it easy for them to approach the ceremony to do their part (Thomas, The Well-Trained Ritualist) .
Thrust
Thrust is the layout that involves having
an audience on three sides, while the fourth is reserved for the ritual to take
place. This configuration allows for
movement, and allows for the celebrant to perform the ritual without turning
their back to any other participants. It
also makes it much easier for ritual participants to approach the altar and
retreat easily, making it easier to share parts of the ritual if you desire to
do so. This is the layout that my grove
uses for our public ritual because it allows all participants to see the ritual
well and participate without worrying about someone in front of them (Thomas, The Well-Trained Ritualist) .
Round
Round ritual configuration is exactly what
it sounds like, the participants of the ritual form a circle, and the rite
itself is performed at its center. This
ritual layout can be very difficult because no matter which direction the
celebrant faces they always have their back to someone. One way to address this issue is to have the
people participating in the ritual stand in the circle with everyone else until
their part of the ritual. When their
portion of the ritual occurs they will step forward into the space to do their
part, and then return to the circle for the remainder of the ritual. However, this doesn’t completely avoid having
your back to someone in the ritual (Thomas, The Well-Trained
Ritualist) .
5.
Choose
a being of the occasion appropriate to a specific high day of your choosing and
describe a theatrical method of conveying the mythology of that being to others
during a public performance. (300 words minimum)
For
the Prairie Shadow Grove Lughnsasdh ritual in 2015, we chose to honor the
Hittite deities, focusing on Telipinu. Telipinu
was the son of the mighty storm god. He
had a strong competence in fostering agriculture, and with his help, fertility
was abundant, so honoring him during the harvest season seemed appropriate for
us. The ritual we originally performed
went well, but we are always looking for new ways to make our rituals more
involved and entertaining for everyone participating, so performing the myth of
Telipinu as a short skit with an assigned narrator could be enjoyable. We
have several younger children who frequently attend our rituals and love to be
involved, so some of the parts were kept very simple to make it easier for them
to remember their parts, while still giving them an opportunity to take part in
the rite.
Our
grove rituals are performed in a “thrust” formation with the altar on the
fourth side. This format also works well
for a performance of this type because it makes it easy for everyone to see and
hear what is happening. The parts could
be assigned before the ritual in order to give time to rehearse as needed.
This
play has 7 parts, but parts could easily be combined if less people are
available, or the narrator part could be split if more people wanted to be
involved.:
·
Narrator
·
Telipinu
·
Shining One
·
Shining Two
·
Hannahannah
·
Citizen One
·
Citizen Two
Narrator: Telipinu was
the son of the mighty storm god. He helped the plants to grow, and with
his help, fertility was abundant. One day, Telipinu was angry. He put his
left shoe on his right foot, and right shoe on his left, and with this all
happiness seemed to leave the world. Plants wouldn’t grow, fire wouldn’t
burn, and mist filled the world. In that moment, Telipinu went away!
Telipinu: I’m so angry! I’m going to hide in the valley
where no one can find me!
Narrator: So he did! Telipinu went away and took with him
all the grain, growth, and abundance the people depended on. He went to a moor
and hid from the world. While he was
there, the world began to fade. Even the
Thousand Gods began to feel his wrath, finding themselves hungry and
thirsty.
Shining One: I’m so hungry! No matter what I eat, I can never get full.
Shining Two: I’m thirsty!
Where is Telipinu?
Narrator: The gods
began to worry and searched for Telipinu from the high mountains to the deep
valleys but no one found him. Days went by, and still no one knew where
Telipinu had gone. The days kept getting
worse and worse. Finally, Hannahannah
decided to get involved.
Hannahannah: I will send my friend, the bee to find
Telipinu. He is wise and knows the hills
and valleys better than anyone else.
Shining One: The bee is
much to small and weak to find Telipinu!
Shining Two: Its wings
are to small, it will take forever!
Hannahannah: I disagree. I have faith in my tiny
companion. You can keep looking if you
wish, but the bee will find Telipinu.
Narrator: The bee flew off and searched the lands high and
low until finally it came upon Telipinu, sleeping in the moor. The bee
tried to wake Telipinu gently, buzzing around his ears and resting on his face,
but Telipinu didn’t stir. Eventually,
the bee decided he could wait no longer and began to sting Telipinu’s hands and
feet wake him and Telipinu finally began to wake. However, Telipinu was still mad. He knew he had to return to the city, but he
was still quite displeased, so the people of the city began to make offerings.
Citizen 1: Mighty
Telipinu! We offer you honey, a gift from the bees. May it sweeten his temperament and remind you
of the beautiful growing flowers.
Make
offering of honey
Citizen 2: Glorious
Telipinu! We offer you grapes and the
goodness that lives inside. Each grape
bears the gift of wine behind its skin.
May the grapes bring goodness to your heart.
Make
offering of grapes
Narrator: Finally, the
people began to pray.
Citizen 1 and 2: Telipinu,
anger is a burning fire, and just as this fire….
Put
out candle burning on the altar
…let your anger be extinguished.
Narrator: This prayer finally got his attention.
Telipinu looked at the land around him, and saw the consequences of his
actions. He began to calm and as he did the mist left the winds,
smoke left the homes, and altars were again in harmony with the gods.
6.
Explain
how you would prepare and deliver three of the following pieces for public
performance, and include an audio or video clip of your performance of each.
(50 words min. each explanation)
Selection 1: Strong meter and
strong rhythm
When reading
poetry that has strong meter or rhythm, you should try to avoid following the
natural rhythm in a way that makes the poem seem monotonous. I restructured the poem into a prose form to
help avoid that rhythm. Moving the poem
into prose requires you to focus on the punctuation to know how to read each
sentence. The link to my reading can be
found here: https://goo.gl/Jze0PA
Ye who love the haunts
of Nature,
Love the sunshine of
the meadow,
Love the shadow of the
forest,
Love the wind among
the branches,
And the rain-shower and
the snow-storm,
And the rushing of
great rivers through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the
mountains,
Whose innumerable
echoes flap like eagles in their eyries;-
Listen to these wild
traditions,
To this Song of
Hiawatha!
Selection 4: Prose
In reading this
piece of prose, I initially reviewed the names and made note of pronunciation
so I could try to pronounce the words as accurately as possible since they are
not names I am familiar with. I then
read through the tale and highlighted the areas of dialog so I could make sure
to make those clear. I also read through
the piece several times to identify natural pauses in the reading. Emotion is
also very important in prose, so I tried to show the humor in the inflection of
my voice by smiling during the reading. My
reading of this selection can be found here:
But Skadi, daughter of
giant Thiassi, took helmet and mail-coat and all weapons of war and went to
Asgard to avenge her father. But the Aesir offered her atonement and
compensation, the first item of which was that she was to choose herself a
husband out of the Aesir and choose by the feet and see nothing else of them.
Then she saw one person's feet that were exceptionally beautiful and said:
“I choose that one;
there can be little that is ugly about Baldr.”
But it was Niord of
Noatun. It was also in her terms of settlement that the Aesir were to do
something that she thought they would not be able to do, that was to make her
laugh. Then Loki did as follows: he tied a cord round the beard of a certain
nanny-goat and the other end round his testicles, and they drew each other back
and forth and both squealed loudly. Then Loki let himself drop into Skadi’s
lap, and she laughed. Then the atonement with her on the part of the Aesir was
complete. It is said that Odin, as compensation for her, did this: he took
Thiassi’s eyes and threw them up into the sky and out of them made two stars.
Selection 5: Strong meter and
strong rhyme
Reading a poem
with strong meter and consistent rhyming, I find it quite difficult to not
become monotonous or sing-songy. It’s
additionally difficult for me because I memorized parts of it in high school
emphasizing the meter in rhyme, so it’s a challenging habit to break. I tried to break this poem into a more
prose-styled format to go against the rhymes.
This also makes it easier to pause only with punctuation and not at a
line break as the poem indicates. My
reading of this selection can be found here: https://goo.gl/HDSwew
Once upon a midnight
dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and
curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly
napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently
rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I
muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing
more.”
Ah, distinctly I
remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate
dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the
morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease
of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore.
For the rare and
radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here
forevermore.
And the silken sad
uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me---filled
me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still
the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis some visitor
entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor
entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This is it, and
nothing more.”
7.
Write a statement of purpose for a rite of
your choosing and one invitation for each of the Three Kindreds. Submit a video
(of no more than ten minutes of total length) of your performance of all four
pieces.
The video for the following pieces
can be found here: https://youtu.be/MfIRDI8Nz54
Statement of Purpose
We come here
tonight, unified as a community to deepen our spiritual practice, and foster
our relationships with the Kindreds. May
this ritual help to build positive relationships, both with those Kindreds and
among all of us.
Three Kindreds: Ancestors
Ancestors,
you who passed before us, ancestors of blood, land, and heart, you who guide us
with your wisdom and your experiences, we ask that you join us in this rite.
Welcome, Ancestors!
Three Kindreds: Nature Spirits
Nature Spirits, you who share this realm with
us, spirits of land, sea, and sky, you who provide us both sustenance and
companionship, we ask that you join us in this rite. Welcome, Nature Spirits!
Three Kindreds: Shining Ones
Shining ones,
great gods and goddesses, deities of our hearths, and others, both known and
unknown, we ask that you join us in this rite.
Welcome, Shining Ones!
Works Cited
Malaiya, Yashwant K. Kalidasa: life and works.
16 January 1996. September 2015. <http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/kalidas.html>.
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
2015. February 2016. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/>.
Meyer, William Stevenson, et al. The Imperial
Gazetteer of India - Sanskrit Literature. 1931. September 2015.
<http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V02_298.gif>.
Richmond, Farley P., Phillip B. Zarrilli and Darius
L. Swann. Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance. University of
Hawaii Press, 1993.
Robinson, Scott R. Theatre and Drama in Ancient
Greece. 2010. 2015.
<http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Theatre_History/Theahis_2.html>.
Thomas, Kirk. Concentration in Ritual. 22
December 2009. February 2016.
<https://www.adf.org/system/files/public/rituals/explanations/Concentration-In-Ritual.pdf>.
—. The Well-Trained Ritualist. 19 November
2009. February 2016.
<https://www.adf.org/system/files/public/rituals/explanations/Well-Trained-Ritualist.pdf>.
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