The Power of Ritual and Dangers of Spectacle
From my book, Every Day Is a Story All Its Own
Chapter 11: The Power of Ritual (and the Dangers of Spectacle)
The outer form can only take on real
authority if the ceremony has equal authority.—Brook, The
Empty Space[1]
The Function and Necessity of Ritual
Now that I have defined what I believe to be the ideal space for the creation and performance of the types of storytelling presented in this book, it is time to consider, in terms of the form and function of ritual, how we work on and present the material, keeping all that has preceded this section in mind. As Campbell told us, ritual is the enactment of the myth, and whether it be communal or individual, there are powerful lessons we can learn, and abundant stories to share.[2]
In The Golden Bough,
a classic compilation of world myths and rituals, James Frazer writes, “All
elaborate rituals, formal, take place with designated leaders in designated
spaces, while ‘primitive religions’ have no designated persons or place (no
priest, no temple) and spirits, not gods, are recognized.”[3] The kinds of storytelling I have
described navigate the space between those inhabited by the formalized rituals
and the “primitive religions” of which Frazer wrote. He goes on to say, as
rituals formalize they become periodic, not occasional,[4] which makes a good case for the
importance of consistent storytelling experiences in our lives. Although we do
not want an experience of storytelling that sacrifices the power of spontaneity
for empty, rote dogma, we should find every opportunity we can to translate
experience into story.
Philosopher William Barrett writes, “Religion to medieval
man was not so much a theological system as a solid psychological matrix
surrounding the individual’s life from birth to death, sanctifying and enclosing
all its ordinary and extraordinary occasions in sacrament and ritual.” This
matches the experiences of improvisational and socially conscious theatre,
sweat lodge, and other spiritual rituals at the core of this book. Grief
specialist Elaine Mansfield defines ritual as “a bridge from the worldly to the
sacred” and from “where we are to where we want to go.”[5] Ritual, then, is another means of
connecting dyads and “bridging the gap.”
Award-winning director Martin Scorsese and I were raised
Roman Catholic. I was immersed in ritual through the signs and symbols I
encountered every Sunday and on High Holy Days, in my preteen years attending
Catholic school, and through my teens attending weekly mass. One of his
biographers writes that Scorsese and fellow Catholic James Joyce were “agents
of transformation. They create moments of epiphany by finding the visual
arrangement of parts that reveal an object’s potential significance, its
radiance.” Scorsese drew “on the stories and myths of his neighborhood,” which included
his church (as Joyce did with Dublin). I believe the power that emanates from
his films is due to the manifestation of the rituals he experienced and
participated in as a family member, student, and altar boy in those spaces.[6]
Because of its reliance on concentration, community, and
connection to energies larger than ourselves, ritual is one of the key
mechanisms for human transformation. As Anodea Judith writes, this
transformation “can be likened to a collective ‘coming of age’ ritual. … We can
look at this passage as a collective ritual of ‘coming of age in the heart.”[7] I discuss rites of passage in more
detail in the final chapter.
Emptiness and the Dangers of Spectacle
Spectacle is both ancient and everywhere. In 1958, William Barrett wrote that Henry James’s novels and other works contained “the awful vision of all Europe’s elegance and beauty being mere gaudy decoration over the face of a human abyss.”[8] The “bread and circuses” of the Roman Empire, Leni Riefenstahl’s work for the Nazis, Abbie Hoffman’s antics during the Chicago 8 Trial, Jim Morrison’s infamous 1969 performance in Miami after seeing the Living Theatre of Molina and Beck, and what many say has become of Burning Man in Nevada are examples of public spectacle.
Spectacle is in no way the aim of the type of
storytelling with which this book is concerned. Spectacle shows the audience a
distorted mirror, to which is quickly, persistently added smoke or fog (mitote in Toltec, maya in Hinduism), creating further distortion. Spectacle uses
light primarily for subterfuge rather than illumination. Brecht and Boal warned
against such a lulling sensory experience, which manifests today in the
substitution of CGI for substantive characters and plotlines in films and
long-form narrative. Scorsese, not surprisingly, has consistently spoken out
against comic book franchises, warning they are not cinema, but amusement park
rides.[9]
It is because of the reliance on spectacle—from a
helicopter landed on stage twenty-five years ago in the musical Miss Saigon[10] to the dangerous debacle of the 2011
Julie Taymor/U2 collaboration Spider-Man:
Turn off the Dark—that people call modern theatre nothing but “smoke and
mirrors.” Broadway has become a place of endless revivals, film stars with
little stage experience (who need film-like spectacle to mask their lack of
craft in live performance), and bloated ticket prices. It has certainly become
even more of what Peter Brook, in 1968, in The
Empty Space, called the “deadly theatre.”
To where does this overreliance on spectacle lead? To get
creative with the current conceptual space—down a rabbit hole. I surmise this
was the thinking of director André Gregory, who, like Brook, incorporated
ritual into his work. In 1975, Gregory staged one of his most memorable productions—Alice in Wonderland—as an ensemble
collaboration, rooting the elements of spectacle within the rites of
Communication and Communion. Consider the immense spectacle involved in Alice’s
time in Wonderland—and through the Looking Glass—as she undergoes her Hero’s
Journey of Separation, Initiation, and Return. It is clear that spectacle
creates surface stimulation, although
the core catalysts reside within the
ritual space. Dorothy’s experiences in the Emerald City are spectacle in the
extreme, including lots of smoke, although the way home is through a simple,
personal ritual. In Mayan terms, the spectacle is Tezcatlipoca, the dark lord
of limitation and death, while ritual is Quetzalcoatl, who unifies perceived
opposites (dyads).[11] Spectacle releases the audience from
personal investment, with no sense of responsibility to question the narrative
or to then go out and better themselves and their community. In Nazi Germany,
spectacle ensured the masses who witnessed it (and it was everywhere) remained complicit in the actions of Hitler, the SS,
and the Wehrmacht. Please understand,
this is not just a regrettable episode in a distant past. In the past eight
years, parallel to the rise of sophisticated social media algorithms and proven
complicity between the mainstream media and US government, there has been a
steep rise in what rhetoricians calls the “electoral-entertainment complex.”[12] Complicating the effect of politics
as entertainment (and debates and congressional hearings as verbal
sparring/playground bullying) is fake news and disinformation (enabled in part
by “artificial intelligence”), which spreads six times faster than factual reporting.[13]
With ritual, however, there is no intent to overwhelm,
mislead, or control the audience—to force feeling upon it with technology and
volume and flash, but instead, to invite those who are willing to do so to join
the (en)actors on a journey to unmapped spaces.
Gregory, in My
Dinner with André, gives an example of the power of ritual when talking
about working with Grotowski in Poland, and witnessing a group of nonactors in
a trance, using chant, drumming, and flute for what he considered an audience
of one. He remarks on the thin line between this experience and the Nuremberg
rallies.[14] What we see here, especially through
Gregory’s experiences and practices and the warnings of those like Brecht, is
that the balance is delicate between ritual and spectacle. Storytellers must be
aware of on which side of the line we are standing. How do we do this? By
honoring the fundamentals of structure, story arc, the power of place, and
character development, and not giving into the temptations of making
substitutions or for making our aim to lure
or to lull. We must be Authentic,
with a unique Vision and Voice, rather than aping the same old stories. As
Stanislavski advised, we should aim for metamorphosis
and not mimesis[15]; the idea is not to convince that
something exists by creating a facsimile of it, but to put our skills as
storytellers to the task of creating authentic experiences. This is why a bare
stage sometimes succeeds better than a multimillion-dollar set. The
long-running Les Misérables provides
an example. As cool as the massive, morphing stage set may seem, it cannot
compete with the tenth anniversary concert, with its simple chairs and a
microphone.
A story that Gerry Cullity, my theatre mentor, told me is
also instructive. On the opening night of a Broadway play, the playwright
attended and overheard the audience remarking on how realistic was the set (a
swamp). There was no mention of the play itself. Although it was structurally
sound, with a compelling story and characters, the visual aspects overwhelmed
it. The next night, the swamp was gone. That “realistic” and focus-pulling set
is akin to Baudrillard’s simulacra,
the imitation of an imitation or false reality in an empty ceremony based on
nothing.[16] In other words, it was spectacle.
Threaded through the writings of the
theorist–practitioners on whom I base my work are phrases that resonate more
fully while considering these examples: “mere representation of reality is not
mistaken for Truth”; “representation is not an imitation or description of a
past event”; “the performance is not an illusionist copy of reality.”[17]
Ritual as Sacred Work
Our aim is to do this ritual work—in rehearsal, performance, and life—in a sacred manner; in a “good way,” as intoned in Lakota sweat lodge prayer-songs. Only then can we add the necessary power to our storytelling to return it to its central place in society. As Clurman said, merely speaking the script is shallow; it is artifice.[18] The prayers associated with ritual are never artifice—they come from our souls and the heart that is created when storytellers put into practice the art and craft detailed in this book—sound structure, dynamic characters, resonant language, and powerful themes.
An example of the power of ritual to heal in dire circumstances
comes from the Tamils of Sri Lanka, a minority group targeted in an ethnic
conflict that has forced many of them to relocate away from their families and
homes. The ritual theatre of the Tamils, according to Dr. Kulanthai M.
Sanmugalingam, involves ecstatic dance, mime, dialogue, crisis, climax,
impersonation, and chanting/singing. In the case of the ritual of the
Mahabaratha story, with its mythic scope, there is an element of spectacle—fire
walking—but it does not overwhelm, it enhances. Again, this is all about
balance; incorporating such an element into, and therefore making it an
expression of, the story, rather than being an add-on or visual/aural
enhancement. Dr. Sanmugalingam says, “Drama was conceived in the womb of
religious myth, and theatre in its ritual.”[19] Participants enter a trance state and
the “gods” enter them, which gives the ritual an added shamanic element.
I end this chapter with a reminder from lucid dreaming
teacher Robert Moss: intention, when
it is clear, supersedes ritual; it is what matters most.[20] This is another reason why
strengthening and focusing our intent is central to our work as storytellers.
Until we are able to locate the moon without our finger, however, ritual
remains a very powerful practice.
[1]Brook,
The Empty Space, 45.
[2]Campbell,
The Power of Myth, 82.
[3]Frazer,
The Golden Bough, Vol. I (Crown
Publishers, 1981 [1890]), 348.
[4]Frazer,
The Golden Bough, Vol. II, 162.
[5]Barrett,
Irrational Man, 24–25; Mansfield,
“Good Grief!,” TEDx.
[6]Kelly,
Martin Scorsese, 11, 40. Hitchcock
was also raised Catholic. In his conversations with Truffaut, he talks about
being fearful of the Jesuit priests and their punishments (25–26), which he
masterfully expressed in his films through his presentation of fear, tension,
and suspense.
[7]Judith,
Wheels of Life, 380.
[8]Barrett,
Irrational Man, 34.
[9]Jacob
Stolworthy, “Martin Scorsese Says Plethora of Comic Book Movies are a ‘Danger’
to Culture,” The Independent,
September 27, 2023, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/martin-scorsese-comic-book-marvel-b2418166.html
(accessed February 3, 2024). The same is true with the recent trend in tech-heavy,
designed-for-selfies “immersive” experiences devoid of or offering only token
narratives and zero stakes.
[10]Miss Saigon returned to London’s West
End in 2014. Although the design team scaled down the production because of
criticisms of spectacle diluting the tragedy of the Vietnam War the play
portrays, the helicopter remained. See Serena Davies, “Behind the Scenes of the
Record-Breaking New Miss Saigon,” in The
Telegraph, May 16, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/10830164/Behind-the-scenes-of-the-record-breaking-new-Miss-Saigon.html
(accessed June 24, 2015).
[11]Pinchbeck,
2012, 30–31.
[12]Ned
O’Gorman, Politics for Everybody: Reading
Hannah Arendt in Uncertain Times (University of Chicago Press, 2020),
Chapter 1.
[13]
“False News Travels Six Times Faster on Twitter than Truthful News,” Science, March 9, 2018,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-times-faster-on-twitter-than-truthful-news
(accessed December 21, 2023).
[14]My Dinner with André. [Transcript].
Directed by Louis Malle. 1981, The Andre Company.
[15]Mitter,
Systems of Rehearsal, 10.
[16]Jean
Baudrillard, “Two Essays,” http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/55/baudrillard55art.htm
(accessed February 28, 2013).
[17]Brecht,
Brecht on Theatre, 11; Brook, The Empty Space, 139; Grotowski, quoted
in Mitter, Systems of Rehearsal, 89.
[18]Clurman,
On Directing.
[19]Shanmugalingam,
“Drama and Theatre Arts among the Tamils of Sri Lanka.”
[20]Moss,
Conscious Dreaming, 255. In the
Afterword to the Easwaran translation of The
Upanishads, Michael N. Nagler echoes Moss: “[I]f one sees through the
symbolism of the ritual to its meaning and
identifies with that inner core of meaning through spiritual union, rites
become superfluous” (316, original emphasis).
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