Ritual Drama Research Articles

‘She Doesn’t Need Mutiyettu’ There’

The selection of Bhadrakali shrines of central Kerala (South India) in which the ritual drama mutiyettu' is conducted as an offering is restricted by religious considerations surrounding the personality of the goddess: performances can only be safely and efficiently given in shrines housing a deity who is in the right mood and has the appropriate nature for being able to be pleased by them and derive benefits from them. Drawing from data primarily gathered in the context of mutiyettu', this article highlights the role played by dramatic offerings in the management of a deity's temper. By discussing issues pertaining to the fields of both performance anthropology and religious studies, it sheds some light on the popular conceptualization of the Hindu goddess, the logic behind the composition of her worship, especially in terms of performing arts, as well as the active power assigned to drama within the popular Hindu context.

Folk Drama

This article provides an overview of how scholars in the discipline of folklore have approached the topic of folk drama over the past one hundred fifty years, arguing that, despite relative neglect in the field, folk drama is a valuable window into culture and should be taken more seriously. I begin with nineteenth century ideas about ritual drama that stem from Sir James Frazer. I then discuss the growing emphasis on context that emerged in the twentieth century, including overlaps between ideas about folk drama, performance, and theories of play more generally. I conclude by providing a brief overview of the relationship between play, drama, and politics, and suggest that contemporary digital realms, such as YouTube, offer a new ecology of folk drama that brings traditional questions about actors, context, play-frames, audience and transformation to the fore in new and interesting ways.

Electroencephalogram characteristics during possession trances in healthy individuals.

Despite intensive studies on cerebral activity during trances involving tranquil arousal states, there are little data on physiological basis of naturally induced possession trances involving hyperarousal active states because of the difficulty of gathering data from participants within a natural cultural context in the field. We investigated the characteristics of electroencephalograms (EEGs) that were specific for naturally induced possession trances involving hyperarousal states in actual rituals. We measured the EEG signals of 12 healthy participants, seven with trance and five without trance, before, during, and after a dedicatory ritual drama in Bali, Indonesia, using a custom-modified field telemetry system. During trance, θ (4-7.5 Hz), α-1 (8-9.5 Hz), α-2 (10-12.5 Hz), and β (13-30 Hz) signals were significantly increased compared with those during the control phases. Such findings were not observed in participants without trance when they performed similar movements in the rituals. The α-1 and α-2 signals tended to remain elevated for several minutes postritual compared with those recorded during the preritual resting state. These results suggest that spontaneous EEG patterns during possession trances may be related, at least in part, to the activation of the reward-generating neuronal system situated in deep-lying brain structures and deactivation of the cerebral cortex.

Living the myth: Revisiting Okigbo’s art and commitment

This is a study of the nature and sources of the persona’s quest in Christopher Okigbo’s poetry. The protagonist in Okigbo’s writing explores the fluid borders between aesthetic and spiritual states, with language and social action as instruments of the self’s aspiration towards spiritual and aesthetic fulfillment. Although Okigbo’s narration is presented in the form of dramatic ritual, the distance or severance of the material from the poet’s own spiritual history is not total, for the historical content eventually intrudes into the writing and reestablishes the authentic autobiography of the poetic self. The historical context, the 1960s, is an age of transition. Okigbo’s characterisation of his persona as an actor in a state of personal transition reflects the poet’s sensitive immersion in the spirit of his times and establishes Okigbo the poet as perhaps its ideal representative. One of the issues raised in this study is that in spite of the protagonist’s recurrent return to the point of passage, there is a relentless drive towards death seen ambiguously as the ultimate goal and state of perfection as well as the perfect form of transition. The central question explored in this study is the roles of poetic diction, the tense politics of the 1960s and the poet’s own intense temperament in determining his peculiar choice of resolution to the dilemma at the centre of his poetry.

Kenneth Burke’s Agonistic Theory of Knowledge

Commentators have questioned whether Kenneth Burke’s dramatism is ontological or epistemological and have provided various answers, at the same time overlooking his actual dramatistic epistemology. This essay demonstrates that dramatism is simultaneously both ontological and epistemological. It also describes and discusses Burke’s own epistemology, his “agonistic” theory of knowledge, which is derived from ritual drama and predicated on suffering (“the suffered is the learned”). This essay also outlines the implications of our analysis for understanding Burkeian dialectic and for doing rhetorical criticism.

Examining the Social Function of Dramatic Rituals of Mazandaran with Emphasis on Three Rituals of tir mā sizeŝu, bisto šeše aydimā, and čake se mā

This study investigates the social functions of Mazandaran ancient rituals and examines the relationship between dramatic rituals and indigenous cultures from the past, and the effect of traditions left by the ancestors in today's society. Geographical domain of this study is entire Mazandaran from East to West, and it is tried to consider the quality of performing the rituals and sanctity of these rituals. This study includes an overview of research, literature and research history, theories of social function of dramatic rituals of Mazandaran, data analysis, and discussion and conclusion. Library and field methods are used to collect the required data on a large scale.In conclusion, it could be argued that further understanding of common beliefs among the people of Mazandaran now and in the past could prevent the disintegration of generations, and it should be noted that all past beliefs and rituals of Mazandaran do not have suitable capabilities to be implemented in today's semi-modern generation and are just for reminding and genreal knowledge.

Ritual Theatre and Drama Therapy - Today's Aspects of Ritual Theatre As a Healing Form

Ritual Theatre and Drama Therapy - Today's Aspects of Ritual Theatre As a Healing Form

The Efficacies of Heritage: Syndromes, Magics, and Possessional Acts

In this paper I present critical insights into the efficacies of heritage. I take the phenomenon of the Jerusalem Syndrome (JS) as my point of departure and recast it as Heritage Syndrome (HS). I do this to better understand how such efficacies are experienced and materialized in ritual possessional acts. As a framework, the JS reveals the power and potency that reside in experiences of collapse. Such disembedding events activate subsequent ritual dramas (whether malign/benign or successful/failed) of world-making, redemption, repair, and renewal. Heritage quests as ritual ‘sacred dramas’ and ‘practical magics’ are I argue, similarly experienced in the collapse of known categories: imagined/real, extraordinary/mundane, possessing/being possessed, and crucially what heritage is versus what heritage does. Writ large, heritage efficacies are bound-up in the breakdown and blurring of boundaries — and thus the non-distinction — between heritage in the conventional sense and other dynamics such as magic, prophecy, and well-being/ill-being. These reveal alternative pathways, potentialities, and patterns of behaviour that demonstrate that dominant, elite, rationalized approaches to heritage banalize heritage efficacies and can thus be termed a failed project. I argue that conceiving of heritage as a syndrome — and critically as a movement away from medical pathologization and towards a recasting of heritages as diverse constellations of cultural-spiritual-magical-emotional experiences and engagements — better reflects the deeply felt complex and transformative practices at play. These heritage rites distinguished at points by those who wish their lives were more dramatic and those who wish their lives were less traumatic better describe how the vast majority of global actors engage with heritage, notably at popular, grass-roots level and in contexts of extremis, yet its significance goes largely unrecognized and unvalued.

The Sugi sakit Ritual storytelling in a Saribas Iban rite of healing

This paper describes a Saribas Iban rite of healing called the Sugi sakit. What distinguished this rite from other forms of Saribas Iban healing was that it incorporated within its performance a long narrative epic concerned with the adventures and love affairs of an Iban culture hero named Bujang Sugi. Here I explore the language used by Iban priest bards both in telling the Sugi epic and in performing the larger ritual drama in which it was set, and look, in particular, at how the Sugi epic, which was otherwise told for entertainment, was integrated into this drama and recast by the priest bards as they performed the ritual, so that it not only entertained their listeners, but also served as a serious instrument of healing.

Mother Mary in the Rising Sun: A “Ritual Drama” among the Csango Hungarians

Mother Mary in the Rising Sun: A “Ritual Drama” among the Csango HungariansThe paper deals with the origin and symbolism of the multirooted rite of “Looking into the Sun at Dawn,” performed yearly on Pentecost, as a part of the Csíksomlyó indulgence (Şumuleu Ciuc, Romania) organised by the Catholic Church. Predominantly female ethnic Csango Hungarians performed this rite until the 21st century, and in the course of their communal visions they often saw the shape of Virgin Mary in the rising sun. The local Franciscan church shelters a 16th century Mother Mary statue — to which miraculous powers are attributed, reflecting the iconography of Mulier Amicta Sole. The paper concludes that the form of Virgin Mary taking shape in the ritualized communal visions does not only incorporate the concept of the Virgin Mother of God but also the one of the pre-Christian ancestress. By methods of comparative mythology and ritual analysis, employing written sources this paper makes an attempt to present how in their deer chasing origin myth, the Huns and Hungarians worshiped the ancestress in the figure of the doe, which they identified with the sun. The conclusion of the study is that the primeaval connection of the sun with the ancestress was adopted into Christianity reapearing in the ritualized communal visions. Maryja Matka Boża w słońcu o świcie: „dramat obrzędowy” u Csango na WęgrzechArtykuł dotyczy określenia źródeł i symboli niejednorodnego obrzędu „Patrzenia w Słońce o świcie” wykonywanego co roku w trakcie Zielonych Świątek w ramach odpustu w Csíksomlyó (Şumuleu Ciuc w Rumunii), organizowanego przez Kościół katolicki. Obrzędu wykonywanego również dziś, głównie przez kobiety należące do grupy etnicznej Csango na Węgrzech, które w trakcie wspólnych wizji często dostrzegają postać Maryi Panny we wschodzącym Słońcu. W lokalnym kościele oo. franciszkanie przechowują XVI-wieczną figurę Matki Bożej odzwierciedlającą ikonografię Mulier Amicta Sole, której przypisuje się cudowną moc. Autor artykułu wskazuje się, że postać Maryi Panny nabierająca kształtu w zrytualizowanych wspólnych wizjach odnosi się nie tylko do koncepcji Bogarodzicy Dziewicy, ale do jednej z przedchrześcijańskich przodkiń. Dzięki metodom komparatystyki mitologicznej i analizie rytuałów zawartych w źródłach pisanych artykuł ten stanowi próbę omówienia, jak w micie o pogoni za jeleniem Hunowie i Węgrzy czcili tę przodkinię w postaci łani, którą utożsamiali ze Słońcem. Konkluzją artykułu jest to, że pierwotny związek Słońca z ową przodkinią został przejęty przez chrześcijaństwo i przywrócony w zrytualizowanych wspólnych wizjach.

Animal Release: The Dharma Being Staged between Marketplace and Park# / 放生：在市场和公园间上演的佛法#

Abstract Despite having been sharply criticized and ridiculed on ecological and/or theological grounds by people both in and outside the Buddhist community for decades, fangsheng (animal release) is still one of the most popular devotional acts among Chinese Buddhists, especially urban Buddhists. In fact, to the dismay of those enlightened critics, this controversial practice may well be one of the key factors that have made Buddhism the fastest-growing religion in China in recent decades. This paper thus attempts to explain why Chinese urban Buddhists persistently favor fangsheng. It begins with a brief review of the process by which famous Buddhist monks and pious emperors constructed the classical form of animal release in China from the late fifth through the eleventh century. Then it describes several styles of animal release that are currently practiced in Nanjing, especially those being reformed and enthusiastically organized by numerous jushi (Buddhist laity) groups. After that, it discusses why fangsheng has become one of the most popular devotional practices in Nanjing. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, the author argues that the most remarkable advantage of fangsheng is the dramatic, sensational effects it can produce easily and reliably, which may explain why it is an invincible method of Buddhist spiritual cultivation. More precisely, fangsheng in practice is the enactment of a sensational ritual drama that represents the pilgrimage of all mortals from hell (the marketplace) to heaven (a park). Many practitioners and attendants appear to be deeply moved by witnessing the creatures chosen for fangsheng, onto which those practitioners often project themselves, saved from torture and tragic death.

Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s. Alex Houen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+282.

<i>Powers of Possibility: Experimental American Writing since the 1960s</i>. Alex Houen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+282.

Discordant fandom and global football brands: ‘Let the people sing’

This article has three main objectives. Our first is to turn to sport as a particularly illuminating and revealing example of consumer culture in the making. Marketplace logic suffuses consumer culture, and exploring practices of fandom as performed thus becomes particularly revealing of the tensions and contradictions which are thrown up when passions collide with finance and branding strategies. Our second objective is to mobilise this insight to further research on brand communities through better situating social practices as entangled in this heady nexus of passions, power and cultural politics. Through a netnographic analysis of forum posts from Celtic Football Club’s notorious ‘Green Brigade’ ultras-style fan-group, we focus on how such social formations forge counter-identities, which act not in harmony with the larger brand ethos but serve to legitimate and affirm a counter-philosophy. As such, our final objective is to better understand the roles of brand agitator and brand heretic as key roles within this contested social formation. Fandom as dramatic ritual and social drama brings in its wake contradictions and tensions especially when it goes toe-to-toe with the forces of economics, branding and marketing strategy. Here, a counter-brand community as we reveal mobilises marketplace logic and appears to adopt their own practices of mimicking brand strategising for their own ends, or as they assert, ‘Let the people sing’.

ACTING LIKE GOD? WAYS TO EMBODY THE DIVINE IN RELIGIOUS PLAY AND DEITY POSSESSION

This paper explores the aesthetics of divine embodiments in eastern India by taking a close look at the mimetic faculty of the human body in two types of cultural performances. I shall compare (1) the mode of acting as a deity on the Ramlila stage, i.e., during a religious play that is enacted to produce sacred reality rather than merely representing Rama or other gods; and (2) the expressiveness of women who, as part of a procession, embody a goddess and thus may become possessed by her. Whereas in both types of events performers refer to divine agency in order to rationalize their behaviour, they impersonate the deity in substantially different ways, particularly with respect to the display of emotions. Unlike several scholars who argue that in ritual drama the process of acting is likely to evoke an experiential state classified as possession, I suggest that we need to differentiate mimetic forms to understand better both deity possession and Indian theatre. Whereas the possessed body develops an expressiveness of its own, the concept of līlā does not subscribe to the ideal of aesthetic realism.

Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures

Abstract Archaeological contextual analyses of four artifacts that depicted composite creatures and that were recovered from the Turner earthwork in southwestern Ohio are integrated here with a biological identification of the creatures’ component animals and a survey of historic Woodland–Plains Indian knowledge about their roles in Woodland–Plains life (previously reported in this journal). Together, the three studies reveal that the creatures were likely employed in a ritual drama concerned with the welfare of recently deceased persons on their journey to an afterlife through underwater–underground realm(s), where they encountered the creatures. The location of the journey to an afterlife through Below realm(s) differs from that of nearly all historic Woodland–Plains Indians, who knew the journey to take place on the earth-disk or to occur by ascension. Implications of the ritual drama at Turner for some recent interpretive trends in Woodland archaeology are explored, including an overemphasis on “world renewal” as the primary motivation behind Ohio Hopewell ceremonialism, the scarce attention given to eschatological matters, and the misleading notion that all agentive behaviors, including mortuary rites, are political.

Editorial

This volume contains a wide range of articles reflective of the varied ways music therapy is conceived of and practiced. A special focus area addresses links between theory and practice (Stige, Aigen, & Hanson-Abromeit) and serves as a forum for discussion of the differing ways music therapy can be understood and undertaken. Linking theory to practice—or practice to theory—continues to be of central importance to the profession, informing both research and clinical work. A separate introduction to these three articles can be found prior to Stige’s article, in this volume. Four clinical practice articles speak to the diversity of practices in the field. Hoyle and McKinney describe work with bereaved adults with intellectual disabilities; Heiderscheit and Madson provides an overview of the iso-principle, including a case study demonstrating the value of a receptive intervention designed to modulate affect; and Curreri explores the role of 20th-century music in facilitating emotional expression and insight for a teenager in an inpatient mental health program. Taking a different perspective, Potvin explores the role of music therapy and ritual drama during imminent death, reminding us of the ineffable nature of music.

The Role of Music Therapy and Ritual Drama in Transformation During Imminent Death

The Role of Music Therapy and Ritual Drama in Transformation During Imminent Death

Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures: Part II–Archaeological Context and a Journey to an Afterlife

Archaeological contextual analyses of four artifacts that depicted composite creatures and that were recovered from the Turner earthwork in southwestern Ohio are integrated here with a biological identification of the creatures' component animals and a survey of historic Woodland–Plains Indian knowledge about their roles in Woodland–Plains life (previously reported in this journal). Together, the three studies reveal that the creatures were likely employed in a ritual drama concerned with the welfare of recently deceased persons on their journey to an afterlife through underwater–underground realm(s), where they encountered the creatures. The location of the journey to an afterlife through Below realm(s) differs from that of nearly all historic Woodland–Plains Indians, who knew the journey to take place on the earth-disk or to occur by ascension. Implications of the ritual drama at Turner for some recent interpretive trends in Woodland archaeology are explored, including an overemphasis on “world renewal”...

Dramatic Elements in the Savar Chaseh among Bakhtyari Tribe

In this paper, an attempt is made to study the Savar Chavaseh ritual among Bakhtyari people. Savar Chevaseh, which means a person sitting in a reversed position while riding an ass, is a ritual, which is intended to punish a convict or a criminal who happens to disturb and bring accusation to his / her family. The author has chosen Bakhtyari people, located in the Southern province in Iran, Khuzestan, to commence the study. He has made use of a qualitative ethnographical method and interview devices. The result shows that the Savar Chavaseh is not only a dramatic ritual but also, as far as performance is concerned, it uses such elements like plot, actor, dialogue, stage, music, costume and audience.

A postmodernist study of Ijengen: The ritual drama of transition at Ode-Irele

Indigenous societies survived through myths and folktales these were responsible for the cohesion that existed prior to the advent of colonialism and hybridization of western culture. Consequently, modern African writers could hardly do without these. African writers have a backup in their quest for creative ingredients and oral performances serve as veritable springboard for these materials. Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’ s Horseman is an example of a literary work that relies greatly on the beliefs, practices and mores of the indigenous society in its subject matter, themes and myth. Key words: Songs, tradition, culture, Ode-Irele, ritual.