1 Reconceptualizing theatre and ritual
Between text and performance
The search for origins and the construction of genealogies was high on the agenda of science and the humanities in the nineteenth century. The climax and most influential model, after Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), was his study The Descent of Man (1871). In the field of Classics, in particular, the question of the origin of theatre – which at that time meant European theatre or, more precisely, ancient Greek theatre – featured most prominently. Philologists and archaeologists alike pursued it thoroughly and with great enthusiasm. In 1839, the Greek Archaeological Society began excavations at the Dionysus Theatre in Athens, and there was enormous anticipation and excitement about the results. Not only the scientific community but also the public at large, the educated middle classes, waited impatiently for any study dealing with the origins of ancient Greek theatre, and greedily devoured every new publication on the subject.
In 1872 (i.e. one year after Darwin’s most successful study) a new book appeared on the subject written by a young Classical scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche, who hoped it would help him qualify for a Chair in philosophy. The book, entitled The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, was not greeted with enthusiasm, however. It did not qualify its author for the professorship for which he had hoped; instead, it cost him his reputation as a philologist and all his students at Basle University (except for one Law student and another of German Literature). It was the greatest failure imaginable.
What can have been so scandalous about a book which, in its very subject matter, would seem to have fitted perfectly into mainstream contemporary issues? First and foremost, it was the statement that ancient Greek theatre originated in the Dionysian principle, which was manifested in and enacted by a chorus of satyrs, the original dithyrambic chorus. It is this principle which annuls individuation, transposes individuals into a state of ecstasy, and transforms them into members of a dancing, singing community – a community in which the boundaries separating individuals are dissolved. This idea was a total contradiction in an age in which there was a cult, a celebration of the individual. The shock it caused was not even softened by another concept Nietzsche formulated in the study – the idea that tragic theatre only comes into being as long as the Apollonian principle, the principle of individuation, is also included: it is from the collision of both principles that tragic theatre arises.
This collision not only strives to annul individualization. It presupposes and entails another scandalous statement:
Greek tragedy in its oldest form dealt only with the sufferings of Dionysus [. . .] all the celebrated characters of the Greek stage – Prometheus, Oedipus and so on – are merely masks of that original hero [. . .] this hero is the suffering Dionysus of the mysteries, the god who himself experiences the suffering of individuation [. . .] This suggests that dismemberment, the true Dionysiac suffering, amounts to a transformation into air, water, earth and fire, and that we should therefore see the condition of individuation as the source and origin of all suffering and hence as something reprehensible.
(Nietzsche 1995: 51–2)
That is to say, Nietzsche traced back the origin of Greek tragic theatre to a ritual, a very particular ritual, in fact: a sacrificial ritual, the ritual of dismemberment. Such an idea was unacceptable to his contemporaries. It not only equated Greek culture with ‘primitive’ culture, and negated the value of the individual, moreover, it also completely disregarded the role and significance of the great texts handed down to us. In nineteenth century Germany, theatre was predominantly defined by its capacity to convey or mediate literary works of art. A theatrical performance was only awarded the status as a work of art if it fulfilled this function. Otherwise it simply served to entertain the audience. The idea was raised, albeit sporadically, that a theatrical performance as such might be seen as an autonomous work of art as, for example, Goethe suggested of opera in On the Truth and Plausibility of Works of Art (1798), an idea which Richard Wagner took up and developed even further when defining the performance of a musical drama as the only conceivable and valuable artwork of the future (The Artwork of the Future, 1848). (Besides, it was Richard Wagner’s music theatre, which Nietzsche hailed and celebrated as the resurrection of the temporarily dismembered, tragic theatre in Birth of Tragedy.) The majority of Goethe’s and Wagner’s contemporaries, however, believed that only the performed dramatic text could secure the status of a work of art for a theatrical performance. Even as late as 1918, the critic Alfred Klaar wrote: ‘Theatre will only succeed in maintaining a position of great importance when dramatic poetry adds its substance.’1
Considering the importance that was accorded to the text, it is small wonder that Nietzsche’s vision of the origin of Greek theatre in ritual aroused an upsurge of indignation and open hostility among his contemporaries. Meanwhile, however, times had changed. Klaar’s statement provoked contradiction. Max Herrmann, a professor of German literature, specializing in the fields of German and Latin literature of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance Humanism, and early German theatre history, refuted it by taking recourse to the origins of theatre: ‘In my view, theatre and drama were [. . .] originally opposites, whose differences are so vast that the symptoms continually reappear: a drama is the word-based artistic creation of an individual; theatre is the product of an audience and those who serve it.’2 While Herrmann connected the dramatic texts to individuals as their creators, he related theatre to a collective, citing some vague origin.
Max Herrmann (1865–1942) was one of the founding fathers of German theatre studies as an academic discipline. Because theatre was considered as something based on dramatic texts, until the beginning of the twentieth century it was regarded as a suitable subject of literary studies. Max Herrmann was preoccupied with early German theatre history and so came to a different understanding of theatre. More than twenty years of research in this subject led him to the conviction that it is not literature which constitutes and secures theatre as art, but performance. In the book that comprised and mediated the results of his research published in 1914, he states: ‘The most important aspect of theatre art is the performance’ (Herrmann 1914: 118). Since none of the current academic disciplines took performance as the object of their study but rather different kinds of texts and monuments, Herrmann called for a new discipline to be founded. Thus, in Germany, theatre studies were established as an academic discipline devoted to performance – not to text.
The redefinition of theatre that led to the foundation of a new discipline can be regarded as a symptom of a change in terms of the cultural self-understanding of the elite which occurred at the turn of the century. It had huge repercussions not only in the humanities and the ruling concepts of theatre but also in the whole culture. At the end of the nineteenth century, modern European culture understood itself prevailingly as a ‘text’ culture. That is to say, it articulated itself and saw itself adequately represented in texts and monuments (such as buildings, statues, paintings and the like) which formed the objects of the different humanities. Alongside this notion of a modern European culture as a ‘textual’ culture, there also circulated the idea of a ‘performative culture’, although it was labelled differently. 3 This comprised and exemplified all those features and qualities which did not define modern European culture and thus helped to shape and define it ex negativo. Performative culture was understood to be that which was called ‘primitive’: medieval, ‘exotic’ or native popular culture which abounded in display, spectacle and excess.
This argument is not based on the assumption that European culture from the end of the Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century actually was a prevailingly ‘textual’ culture. Quite the contrary, there are good reasons to believe that it was not only medieval culture which was performative. Even after print was invented,4 forms of cultural performance still existed and played an important role in European culture, even determining the selfimage and self-understanding of its members to a great extent, right up to the late eighteenth century. Quite a large proportion of texts were actually exposed to performative means first – as, for instance, when they were read aloud in the circle of the family or of friends. Even as late as the nineteenth century, there were a considerable number of cultural performances in which the élite participated as, for instance, weddings, funerals, religious services, national festivals and so on. Moreover, new genres of cultural performance such as circus performances, colonial exhibitions, striptease shows and the like were being invented. These were undoubtedly important for modern European culture for various reasons, as will be explained, but by the end of the nineteenth century they did not determine the self-image and self-understanding of its members. Performances such as these were created to represent and embody ‘the other’, i.e. that which the modern (male) European excluded from his own self-image. In these performances, it was exposed and displayed before his controlling gaze.
In the circus, wild animals which man can control and tame were the focus of observation as well as human beings who were defined by and through their bodies, such as acrobats, tight-rope walkers, trapeze artists, horse-riders etc. on the one hand and all kinds of freaks, on the other. The different kinds of show put on in the market place and at fairs were created as a new genre of cultural performance which exposed either the wild, strong nature of man and beast under control, or all kinds of deviation from the ‘normal’ human body.5
The colonial exhibition also drew on different kinds of shows from the fifteenth century which exhibited ‘savages’ in fairgrounds, taverns, gardens and the like. In the course of the nineteenth century, this kind of exhibition moved into new arenas: to the World and Colonial Exhibitions as well as zoological gardens. Their character also changed. It was now claimed that they served primarily scientific and educational goals and purposes. At first, the exhibition consisted of the everyday lives of the people on display. Later, it was ‘enriched’ by shows including prayers, singing, dancing, wedding processions and even theatrical plays. In most cases, the ‘authenticity’ of such performances was emphatically stressed. The purpose and aim of such exhibitions/performances was, among others, to reveal and demonstrate to the European audiences the inferiority of the ‘uncivilized’, ‘primitive’ people on display in order to legitimize their colonization by ‘civilized’ Europeans.6 Thus, it is small wonder that Electra, by equating Greek culture with the culture of such ‘uncivilized’, ‘primitive’ people in some respects caused an outrage among some ‘civilized’, ‘educated’ critics.
The striptease show embodied, represented and confirmed a particular relationship between male and female: it was the male gaze which defined and controlled the norms of femininity; and however these were determined, the female was denied the status and rights of a speaking subject. The female was defined purely by and through her body.7
It is characteristic of the newly invented genres of cultural performance that the roles of performer and spectator were clearly defined and regarded as irreversible. It was the (male) European individual who, defined by ‘mind’, was in the position of the external, superior observer while the performers – the acrobats, the socalled primitives, the women – defined by the body, represented and embodied his inferior ‘other’ – an ‘other’ whom he desired as well as feared and whom he attempted to exclude not only from power but also from his own self-image. Thus, it was appropriate for them to be represented by/in performances and not in texts. For texts were meant to represent the self-image of the (male) middle class European. Textual culture and performative culture were thought of as extreme opposites.
It must not be overlooked, however, that modern European culture was never monolithic, i.e. exclusively ‘performative’ or ‘textual’. Rather, it was characterized by the prevalence of certain tendencies, which, even if they gained temporary cultural dominance, still left room for other cultures to contradict, counterbalance, or simply offer an alternative.8 Accordingly, the performative turn which I diagnose at the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century – as is manifested in a performance such as Electra or the theories under investigation in this chapter9 – can be described as a shift of focus from ‘text’ to ‘performance’, which allowed and even encouraged a ‘return’ to other, more performative epochs in European culture and, above all a change in focus towards so-called primitive cultures in search for models.
Redefining ‘theatre’
In German culture, theatre was traditionally held in high esteem. At least, from the eighteenth century onwards, it was generally considered to be part of the élite culture, i.e. the culture of the educated middle classes – and something that greatly contributed to the shaping and stabilization of their cultural identity. Accordingly, theatre, as we have seen, was thought of and defined as textual art. Thus, it is small wonder that Herrmann’s definition of theatre as performance came close to sacrilege.10 However, as a direct consequence of the performative turn, this concept gained the status of a key term which begged thorough theoretical definition and reflection. Herrmann elaborated and provided it in different works between 1910 and 1930 in terms of (1) the particular medial conditions of theatre, (2) its materiality and (3) aestheticity.
The particular medial conditions of the theatre
Most interestingly, it is the relationship between actors and spectators from which Herrmann proceeded as he developed his concept, arguing by citing some vague, never explained origin of theatre:
The original meaning of theatre was derived from the fact that it was a social game – played by all for all. A game in which everyone is a player – participants and spectators [. . .] The spectator is involved as co-player. The spectator is, so to speak, the creator of the theatre. So many participants are involved in creating the theatre as festive event that the basic social nature of its character cannot be lost. Theatre always involves a social community.
(Max Herrmann, ‘Über die Aufgaben eines theaterwissenschaftlichen Instituts’, Lecture held on 27 June 1920, cited Klier 1981: 19)
It is the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators constitutive of a performance which allows it to come into being. For a performance to occur, it is necessary that actors and spectators assemble for a particular time span at a particular place and do something together. By defining it as ‘a game played by all for all’, Herrmann also redefines the relationship between actors and spectators in theatre. The spectators are no longer conceived of as distant or empathetic observers of the actions unfolding in the scene, making sense of what they perceive, or as intellectual decipherers of a message formulated by the actions of the actors. It is not a subject–object relationship which comes into existence, in the sense that the spectators turn the actors into objects of their observation, nor in the sense that as subjects, the actors confront the spectators with messages that are authoritative, non-negotiable. Rather, bodily co-presence implies a relationship of co-subjects. The spectators are regarded as co-players, as participants. It is they who also contribute to the creation of a performance by participating in the game, i.e. by their physical presence, their perception, their responses. The performance comes into existence by way of and resulting from the interaction between actors and performers. The rules according to which it is brought forth can be regarded as rules of a game which are negotiated by all participants – actors and performers alike – and which are complied with or violated. That is to say, the performance is taking place between actors and spectators; it is brought forth by both parties. Thus, the performance is not to be regarded as a representation or expression of something which already exists elsewhere – like the text of a play – but as something which is brought forth by the actions, perceptions, responses of both actors and spectators alike. The performance calls for a social community, since it is rooted in one, and, on the other hand, since in its course it brings forth a social community that unites actors and spectators. Theatre, thus, appears to be an important community-building institution.
Theatre’s materiality
In line with his insight that a performance happens here and now between actors and spectators, that it cannot be fixed or handed down, that it does not dispose of an artefact but is ephemeral and transitory, Herrmann did not analyse the texts being performed nor include artefacts such as the set when he elaborated his concept of performance. He even wrote a polemic against naturalistic and later expressionist stage painting because he regarded it as ‘a fundamental and decisive mistake’ (Herrmann 1931: 152–3), though in some cases, he did accord it an artistic value. In his view, all this is somewhat arbitrary in terms of the ‘essence’ of performance. Instead, it is the bodies of the actors who move in and through the space which bring about and characterize the particular – ephemeral – materiality of the performance by bringing forth an ever changing corporeality. For, ‘the greatest theatrical achievement lies in the art of acting’. It alone brings forth ‘the genuine, the purest work of art which theatre is able to create’ (ibid.). In this sense, Herrmann seems to be less interested in the fictional character of a fictional world which the actor creates through his art. It is the ‘real body’ and the ‘real space’ (ibid.), which he is talking about, i.e. he does not regard the body of the actor in the stage space as a mere carrier of meaning, as a semiotic body – a text composed of signs for the character played – but understands body and space in their particular materiality. It is these which most of all constitute the performance and not just the fictional characters and fictional spaces which they might signify. Herrmann seems to be less interested in the body as signifier, in the semiotic body, and more in the ‘real’ body, the phenomenal body of the actors, their bodily being-in-the-world.
Critics of theatre performances at that time – and, to some extent, critics of today – proceeded from the assumption that the actor in the performance has to represent and to express the meanings conveyed in the text by means of his body and, in this way, to transmit them to the audience, thus affirming the priority of the text over the performance. But Herrmann does not deal with the question of representation at all, i.e. the particular reality which is represented on stage and the possible meanings that could be attributed to the outward appearance of the actors and their actions. These are not included in his concept of performance. This may be because these were the only criteria which contemporary theatre critics and literary scholars were willing to accept as relevant, so that the semiotic dimension of a performance could be taken for granted. Or, it may be that Herrmann – as Judith Butler some decades later – understood expressivity and performativity as opposites, one excluding the other. The concept of performance which he developed seems to suggest such an understand...
