Eli Rozik is Ph.D. and professor emeritus of theatre studies. He was twice head of the Department of Theatre Studies and Dean of the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University. He specializes in theatre theory, particularly in non-verbal communication in performance analysis; and has published numerous articles in international leading journals in Europe and the US. His books include The Language of Theatre; The Roots of Theatre Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin; Metaphoric Thinking; Generating Theatre Meaning; Fictional Thinking; Comedy: A Critical Introduction; Theatre Sciences: A Plea for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Theatre Studies; and Future Theatre Research.

Jewish Drama & Theatre

From Rabbinical Intolerance to Secular Liberalism

By Eli Rozik

Sussex Academic Press

Copyright © 2014 Eli Rozik
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84519-598-4

Contents

Acknowledgements,
Introduction – Dramatic and Theatrical Creativity,
Part I Tangential Jewish Drama,
1 Jewish Theatre and Ritual Origin,
2 The Book of Job as Greek Tragedy,
3 Ezekiel’s Exagoge,
4 The Binding of Isaac in Theatre,
5 Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina,
6 Felipe Godinez’ The Queen Esther,
7 Leone de’ Sommi’s A Comedy of,
Part II Advent of Yiddish Theatre,
8 Adoption of Theatre despite Ritual,
9 Sephardi Roots of Jewish Parody,
10 The Nature of Carnival,
11 The Purim-shpil,
12 The Purim-rabbi,
13 A Tribute to Yiddish Theatre,
14 The Languages of the Jews and Jewish,
Part III The Jewish Nature of Israeli Theatre,
15 Sacred Narratives in Secular Contexts,
16 Actualization in the Israeli Theatre,
17 Rina Yerushalmi’s Jephthah’s Daughter,
18 Sisera’s Mother and The Trojan,
19 Rina Yerushalmi’s Woyzeck 91,
20 Nissim Aloni’s The American Princess,
21 Hanoch Levin’s Sufferings of Job,
List of Cited Works,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Jewish Theatre and Ritual Origin

The theory of the ritual origin of theatre has become a cultural commonplace, even beyond the circles of theatre scholarship. First proposed in its alleged scientific form by the Cambridge School of Anthropology (henceforth CSA), it swiftly became a conventional “truth”, equally accepted by expert and layman. Although thoroughly refuted by an excellent scholar such as A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, the influence of the CSA can still be clearly felt in subsequent theories. While alternative arguments and methods have been suggested to replace the refuted ones, the main thesis that drama/theatre originated in ritual, remains firm.

This theory also supports the theory of the re-creation of theatre by the Church during the tenth century CE. Eventually, the theory was also adopted by twentieth-century leading directors, such as Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Arian Mnouchkine, Richard Schechner and Eugenio Barba, who attempted to restore the ritual elements that assumedly had been lost, and were perceived by them to be vital for the rejuvenation of theatre.

The ritual theory of theatre origin is highly relevant to the present study because Jewish theatre shows no signs of a re-creation from ritual. On the contrary, whereas the adoption of theatre in the context of the Christian ritual is not questioned here, it is quite clear that Jewish ritual was a crucial factor in rejecting theatre for several more centuries and, moreover, that Judaism adopted theatre despite ritual.

In light of these considerations, and if only for scientific reasons, this theory should be subjected to methodological questioning and re-examination. I intend to show that the ritual theory of origin was worked out on the grounds of erroneous theories of both ritual and theatre, and reflects an ideological attitude rather than a scientific approach. Moreover, directors created artificial ritual elements, based on a superficial knowledge of real rituality, while the nature of their impact on audiences has never been researched.

In the development of the twentieth-century theory of ritual origin of theatre, three major contributions can be discerned. In chronological order, these are: the CSA ritual theory, Ernest T. Kirby’s shamanist theory, and Victor Turner/Richard Schechner’s performance theory. I intend to subject them to criticism only after presenting them as fully as possible in their own terms. The same approach will be applied to the theory of re-creation of theatre in the Middle Ages by the Church (I discuss all these theories in detail in Rozik, 2002).

If indeed, as we shall see below, none of these interchanging theories stand up to criticism, the questions that need to be asked are: How can the continued persistence and vitality of the main thesis of ritual origin be explained? How can one account for the readiness to accept it as a true description of the origin of theatre? Why have such outstanding theatre directors, as mentioned above, adopted it? If the theory conforms more to being a theatrical or cultural ideology than a scientific theory, what is its appeal in the eyes of the theoretical experts, practitioners and laymen alike? My thesis is that these theories have provided theatre with a numinous aura, which otherwise it does not always possess, and that they probably satisfy the sense of loneliness and yearning for communality, typical of twentieth-century individuality.

My approach is based exclusively on the history of western theatre. My knowledge of Asian theatre – for which the western theory of ritual origin has been quite influential – is insufficient to either support or reject my argument.

Advent of ancient drama/theatre

My criticism is based on the assumption that rituals and the theatre medium are phenomena in different spheres of human activity. ‘Theatre medium’ is used here in the sense of an (iconic) medium capable of describing fictional worlds. The iconic system includes media such as theatre, opera, figurative ballet, animation, puppet theatre and cinema. ‘Ritual’ is used here, in terms of speech act theory, as a complex macro-‘speech/medium act’, whose main purpose (perlocutionary effect) is to influence a divine entity to change a state of affairs for the benefit of the performer or the community on behalf of which the ritual operates (cf. Austin, Searle, 1985 & 1986, Levinson & Herman). In principle, a ritual may be performed by means of either a single medium, such as language (e.g., a prayer), or other media, including nonverbal acts (e.g., the sacrifice of an animal). The macro ritual speech/medium-act may even feature several media in varying proportions and order. It can thus be conjectured that ancient rituals may have included components formulated in the medium of theatre as their construction units, even if there is no extant evidence to support this conjecture.

On a different level, the medium of theatre is a method of representation and communication, which affords a means for the description of worlds, especially fictional ones. In this capacity, the theatre medium may reflect any intention and be employed for any purpose, including purposes that contrast those of ritual. For example, whereas one of the secondary purposes of ritual is to reaffirm the beliefs that nourish the cohesion of a community, theatre can be employed for either reaffirming or refuting them. The latter function cannot even be imagined in the context of ritual.

As suggested above, three different approaches have been suggested for the origin of ancient theatre from ritual. In order of appearance, these are: the CSA, the shamanist and the performance theories. In the following I present these approaches, followed by my own critical remarks.

Cambridge School of Anthropology

In its scientific guise or, to be more accurate, in what was then thought to be a scientific method, a theory of the ritual origin of drama was suggested at the beginning of the twentieth century by a group of English scholars, who published their major works around 1912–14, and are known by the collective name of the Cambridge School of Anthropology (CSA). The leading scholars of this school were: Jane Harrison (1927 & 1951), Gilbert Murray (1927), and Francis McDonald Cornford (1914). They supported the CSA thesis with alleged archeological and literary evidence from ancient Greece and surrounding cultures, whether contemporary or not. Inter alia, their aim was to promote the thesis that Ancient Greek theatre originated in ritual, Dionysiac ritual in particular, during the sixth century BCE. Despite substantial differences, they shared a basic approach and main theses, which made them a unitary and distinct school.

They also shared a serious methodological problem: their object of research was never unambiguously defined. It has never been clear as to whether they were attempting to determine the origin of definite dramatic genres – tragedy and comedy – or the origins of the theatre medium itself. They seem to have preferred dealing with the first question, but elements of the second one were quite often mixed in their deliberations. Unfortunately, this lack of distinction has remained to some extent even in more recent studies, not to mention books on theatre history. The widespread implicit assumption is that the creation of both major dramatic genres and the creation of the theatre medium itself are two aspects of the same process. Nonetheless, in my opinion, the discussion of these should be separated because, while genres are defined and distinguished among themselves by the structures of their fictional worlds and moods (e.g., serious/sublime or comic moods), the medium of theatre is shared by all dramatic genres. For example, in the process of its creation, tragedy could have adopted the already existing medium of theatre employed in popular comedy (Nicoll: 20 ff.).

(a) The creation of dramatic genres: The crux of the CSA’s argument is the assumed existence of a pre-Dionysiac ritual that worshiped the Spring Daimon (eniautos daemon). The presupposition of this ur-ritual probably explains the existence of various faiths that feature the very same pattern of death and resurrection of a god – such as Osiris, Tamuz, Adonis, Orpheus and Persephone – that corresponds to the yearly cycle of the seasons. In this sense, the Dionysiac ritual is assumed to be a specific offspring of the Spring Daimon ur-ritual; i.e., of a divinity that represents the cycle of the death and resurrection of nature.

According to this approach, the dithyramb was created within Dionysiac ritual from a ritual dance (sacer ludus) that represented the aition (mythical narrative) of the divine spirit/god Dionysus (Murray: 341). Dithyramb is a kind of serious and sublime choral storytelling poem, devoted to narratives of gods and/or heroes. The CSA scholars accepted Aristotle’s dictum regarding the advent of tragedy from dithyrambic poetry (Poetics VI, 12). However, in contrast to Aristotle, who was relatively close to this process and did not mention any connection between dithyramb and Dionysiac ritual, they argued in favor of continuity – mediated by dithyramb – between Dionysiac ritual and tragedy. They also claimed that this ritual source left its traces in the structure of the fictional worlds of both dithyramb and tragedy.

Murray suggested an apparently sophisticated method for detecting these traces in a pattern of recurrent narrative elements, appearing in a certain order, which were supposed to reflect the pattern of death and resurrection characteristic of the rituals generated by the ur-ritual of the Spring Daimon, including the Dionysiac ritual. This pattern was assumed to include the following events, in this order: (1) agon – the struggle between the Spring Daimon and its enemy (winter); (2) pathos – the ritual death of the divinity; (3) messenger – the report about the death or display of the corpse; (4) threnos or lamentation – the expression of grief; and (5–6) anagnorisis – the recognition of the dead god and epiphany or theophany – his resurrection and apotheosis (pp. 343–4).

Already in 1927, Pickard-Cambridge – the then leading scholar of ancient Greek culture – in his book Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy, demolished one by one the various arguments of the CSA. He demonstrated that there is no evidence of the presupposed ritual of the Spring Daimon or of any similar one in all ancient Greece. Harrison herself implicitly acknowledged this fact by supporting her own claim through Egyptian sources concerning the ritual of Osiris, who in her view was the prototype of the gods who die and resurrect (1951:15–23). In general, the assumed existence of an ur-ritual can be accepted, but only on condition that it explains something in regard to either ritual or tragedy. However, while this assumption can explain the existence of a set of rituals revealing the same pattern of death and resurrection, and their distribution within a relatively delimited area in the world, there is nothing in it to explain the creation of the tragic dramatic genre.

Pickard-Cambridge also demonstrated that the traces of the set of narrative components, in their stipulated order, as suggested by Murray, cannot be found either in any known form of ritual, including Dionysiac ritual (p. 198), or in any known dithyramb or tragedy. Even in Euripides’ The Bacchae, the extant tragedy that dramatizes a central episode in the life of Dionysus, the pattern of death and resurrection does not materialize. Pickard-Cambridge claims that the application of this model involves an intolerable degree of flexibility in the definition of terms, as illustrated by Murray himself. In principle, the assumption of a mythical pattern shared by ritual, dithyramb and tragedy is obviously absurd, especially because of the reduction of all fictional worlds to a single pattern that stresses the narrative elements of death and resurrection. It also contrasts the diversity of fictional characters and actions in both dithyramb and tragedy. Indeed, in many a known tragedy principal characters die, but their death is final, as human death is, and there is no tragic hero who eventually resurrects.

Pickard-Cambridge also argued, in contrast to the CSA, that the link between dithyramb and Dionysiac ritual was severed in the early stages of the former’s development. Indeed, there is no known dithyramb, either complete or fragment, that narrates the aition of this god. Apart from a short deferential passage in honor of Dionysus, no known dithyramb tells its aition or any other narrative connected to his life and death. In contrast, there is ample evidence that dithyrambic poems dealt with narratives of various heroes and gods, typical of the Homeric tradition. If this was the case, the tradition that linked dithyramb to Dionysiac ritual was severed prior to the advent of tragedy. It is noteworthy that most known dithyrambs are fragments and there are no extant full poems before those of Bacchylides, from the fifth century BCE – a century after the creation of tragedy (cf. Burnett, 1955).

Cornford too, in The Origin of Attic Comedy, suggested a theory of origin from Dionysiac ritual for Aristophanic comedy. In principle, he accepts the Aristotelian account, according to which Attic comedy originated from popular forms, that existed prior to comedy’s institutionalization in Athens (Poetics V, 2), which in turn originated from phallic songs (ibid. IV, 12). In particular, Cornford mentions the previous existence of Megarean farce, mentioned contemptuously by Aristophanes himself (pp. 178–9). Cornford’s innovation lies in his attempt to link Aristophanic comedy to Dionysiac ritual, as it was understood by the CSA, by mediation of the phallic songs and pre-Aristophanic popular comedy.

Like Murray, Cornford suggested a set of narrative elements, appearing in a strict order, shared by Dionysiac ritual, popular comedy and Attic comedy. This set includes the following components: (1) prologos – the exposition scene; (2) parodos – the chorus’ entrance; (3) agon – the struggle between the gods; (4) parabasis; (5) sacrifice – the display of the vanquished and dead god, who symbolizes the summer; (6) feast – the dismemberment and eating of the god; (7) marriage and komos (pp. 2–3). In Cornford’s view, only the parabasis does not belong in the supposed shared pattern, because of its non-dramatic nature. It is assumed, therefore, to be an innovation of Attic comedy itself. If other performance components, such as prologos, parodos and komos, are disregarded, the allegedly essential components of the Dionysiac pattern are: agon, which represents the struggle between two principles – or seasons – identified by Cornford as the hero and the villain of the dramatic action (p. 2); the sacrifice, which represents the slaying of the benevolent god by the malevolent god; the sacred feast, which represents the dismemberment (and/or cooking) and eating of the god (i.e., omophagy); and resurrection, followed by a ceremony of marriage, which represents the return of the god and the union of the powers of fertility that ensure the renewal of nature and the welfare of the community (p. 99).

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