Describe and analyze your experience of the performance event in terms of ritual.
Tell: First, tell the story of your experience as an audience/participant Remember, from our storytelling lecture and readings the elements and phases connected to dramatic ritual: Entry, Preparation, Climax, Celebration, and Return. Describe your experience from the moment you arrived as audience/participant. What did you see? What did you hear? What did you think and feel as you watched? As much as possible, try to share this part of the response in story form. Take us there with you. (Hint: refer back to Chapter 1 in textbook and our Performance Lecture for key concepts connected to dramatic ritual)
Analyze: How well did the performance succeed at what it was trying do? Your response here should not focus on likes and dislikes but rather, thinking about the impact of the event as a ritual.
Expectations – What did you expect going into the event? What happened to either confirm or break those expectations?
Audience/performance relationship – What sort of relationship did the event seek to create between audience and performer(s)? How did it try to do that? How well did it succeed?
Purpose/intent of the whole event – what was it trying to do? (Make us laugh, make us cry, make us make us think, make us take action, make us outraged, make us connect, enlighten or educate us?). How did it try to do it? How well did it succeed? Use at least one concrete example from the event to prove your point.
Transformation: A dramatic ritual involves some sort of transformation. How, if at all, were you changed by the event? How was your experience different from other participants? This could be something small, like a mood shift, or a slight shift in perspective If you did not feel changed in any way, don’t fake it, but be specific in your analysis about what got in the way.
Compare/Contrast: Now think about the Elements of Ritual: Time treated specially, Rehearsed/practiced, Marked/framed behavior, Special clothes, Props/equipment, Specific sequence of events and Efficacy versus the Elements of Theatre: Space, Actors, Audience, and Content. Could the performance you attended be considered theatre? Why or why not?
