Foreword

Abstract

On stage, in the wings, in the audience and outside: these are the spaces ethnologists and anthropologists traverse in the practice of fieldwork and writing—metaphorically, as participant-observers within a given community, or literally, if they study theatre forms.Immersion in another community or society (with the consequent blurring of exoticism), purposeful distancing in time and space (rivalling with empathy generated by field presence), systematic investigation of selected themes, and constant striving to have theory inform data and perceptions of the objects of study—all these aspects of the anthropological method can be applied, in a given society, just as effectively to theatre as to those institutions (matrimonial, political, economic or religious, among others) usually studied by ethnologists. A circumscribed object, but one with complex implications for individuals and groups, theatre is a sophisticated, often useful means of access to understanding society, or at least a key to reading the combinatory diversity of a community's functioning, its history, its material production and technology, its cognitive orientations. Building on the necessary contextual analyses revealing the social, political and economic underpinnings of theatre forms, developing the concept of an expressive or aesthetic system in which theatre is but one element interacting with other artistic productions or practices within a given society, and testing the concept through intercultural comparison, the horizons for theatre anthropology are broad enough.Attempting a more modest beginning, this special issue seeks to portray a special moment, a meeting between anthropology and theatre in a fertile, though underdeveloped field of study, with contributions from both anthropologists and theatre scholars.