The Future of Ritual - writings on culture and performance - Richard Schechner

The Future of Ritual 

Writings on culture and performance 

 Richard Schechner

"Schechner has given us all the tools we need to appreciate the deeper social significance of what is taking place in front of our eyes instead of accepting it for what it seems to be."

Colin Turnbull, The New York Times

In The Future of Ritual, Richard Schechner explores the nature of ritualised behaviour and its relationships to performance and politics. A brilliant and uncontainable examination of cultural expression and communal action, The Future of Ritual asks pertinent questions about art, theatre, and the changing meaning of "culture" in today's intercultural world. It is richly illustrated with over 50 photos of performances and public events.

The Future of Ritual is a lively, accessible, and timely book which anyone interested in performance, anthropology or Schechner's own work will find fascinating. It is invaluable and compelling reading for student's of performance studies, cultural studies, and theatre anthropology.

Richard Schechner is University Professor at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, General Editor of the Routledge "Worlds of Performance" series, and artistic director of East Coast Artists. his books include Performance Theory and Between Theater and Anthropology.

Abaixo, você pode encontrar alguns trechos do livro que tem particular relevância para Labirinto Urbano e as pesquisas e os processos envolvidos nossa projeto.

From Chapter 2: Playing

'...the reaction of the non players isa big part of what gives dark play its kick.'

' .....Taken together these examples indicate that dark play:

1  is physically risky;

2  involves intentional confusion or concealment of the frame "this is the play";

3  may continue actions from early childhood;

4  only occasionally demands make believe;

5  plays out alternative selves. The play frame may be so disturbed or disrupted that the players themselves are not sure if they are playing or not - their actions become play retroactively: the events are what they are, but by telling these events, by reperforming them as narratives, they are cast as play. ' 

'Indeed, art and ritual, especially performance, are the homeground of playing.'

'Playing is a mood, an attitude, a force.'

From Chapter 3:The street is the stage

'What is the relation between "the authorities" and "the people" when the people occupy public streets, squares,plazas and buildings? Do carnivals encourage giddy, drunken, sexy feelings and behaviour - or does the very action of taking spaces, of "liberating" them, make people giddy? Is it accidental that official displays consist of neat rectangles, countable cohorts, marching past and under the fixed gaze of the reviewing stand, while unofficial mass gatherings are vortexes, whirling, full of shifting ups and downs, multi focused events generating tension between large-scale actions and many  local dramas? And why is ti that unofficial gatherings elicit, permit, or celebrate the erotic, while official displays are so often associated with the military? Can a single dramaturgy explain political demonstrations, Mardi Gras and similar kinds of carnivals, Spring Break weekends, and ritual dramas?'

These questions are asked of six events selected for their generic range and cultural diversity.

'When people go to the streets en masse, they  are celebrating life's fertile possibilities.'

'To allow people to assemble in the streets is always to flirt with the possibility of improvisation - that the unexpected might happen'.