Theoretical Origins Of Theatre

RITUAL Virtually every society, large and small, depends on rituals to smooth the machinery of daily life, and to ensure the continuity of cultural norms. (See Leonel Mitchell The Meaning of Ritual) Rituals themselves grew (if not evolved) out of attempts to control the vagaries of nature by means of homeopathic and sympathetic magic. (See Sir George James Frazer's The Golden Bough; Mircea Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas, 3 vol. ) Rituals which took on "dramatic" characteristics served many purposes in many cultures ranging from success in the hunt and control of the weather, to fertility, to celebration and initiation (rites of passage), to funerary. It is hardly surprising that many rituals become "religious" in nature or spring from religious impulses. The spectacular element in many religious rituals, coupled with the impersonation related to sympathetic magic in those same rituals clearly lend themselves to "dramatic" events. Such rituals existed in many places including ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and still exist in many cultures today from India to Africa. The transition from ritual to drama will be examined in the theatrical activities of Ancient Greece which began at festivals related to the worship of Dionysus.

STORYTELLING In every virtually culture where theatre exists, a tradition of the oral performance of myths and legends precedes the appearance of epic poetry and dramatic literature and performance. These stories may have evolved from Og acting out stories of adventures on the hunt and enlisting one of his number to join him by impersonating his quarry. Some have suggested a practical application of such stories not unlike the "dances" of bees, which seem to educate other bees where food can be found. From Gilgamesh, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the Sanskrit Ramayana and Mahabharata to the songs of the Celtic Bards and scaelige like Beowulf, the chansons of the minestrels and troubadours and even Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this instinct for storytelling provides a framework in which the theatre can flourish.

FANTASY Many modern psychologists claim that human beings have a gift for fantasy, an instinct for fiction, if you will. One such argument holds that flights of fantasy act as a shield against the harshness of reality.

IMITATION Aristotle theorized that man is instictively imitative. He argued that children learn by imitating adults. We all imitate others whom we admire. When we see a pitiful creature in life, we may react in horror or disgust, but when we see an actor successfully imitate such an action, it gives us pleasure. For Plato (and later St. Augustine of Hippo), imitation was removed from the Truth, and should be avoided, but Aristotle found imitation aesthetically superior to life.

With the strong caveat that it is unwise to ascribe behaviors found in primitive people in remote areas of the contemporary world to the ancients, nontetheless, clear anthropological evidence of the existence of all these impulses in the human psyche is manifest in the Gimi Tribe of New Guinea.