Hey there! I’m Mike Rugnetta and THIS is the first episode of Crash Course Theater. Welcome! In the episodes to come we’ll have it all: tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral-expealidocious. Yup, this series could go on forever. And let me introduce you to Dionysus, Greek god of the theater. [[[Maybe Dionysus belches from offstage.]]] And wine. They can’t all be charming, genius birdmen, I guess. In this series we’ll explore the history of theater and how we can understand and analyze it. We’ll take a look at significant plays and performances along the way, but in this episode we’re going to define theater and look at some theories about how it got started. So, Prologue over! Act 1, Scene 1, BEGIN! INTRO First! Let’s define “theater, the building”: a theater is a place in which a play is performed. If you trace the word back to its Greek origins and it literally means “the seeing place.” It can be big or small, indoors or outdoors, purpose-built or just borrowed. Sometimes plays are performed in spaces that aren’t really theaters at all—in a park or a parking lot, on a sidewalk, or in a private home. Theater also refers to the performance of plays and to the body of literature and other documentation that has accompanied it. Some plays, known as closet dramas, aren’t even written to be performed. And that’s theater, too. So are improvised plays that don’t have a script and plays that have a script, but don’t use words, like some of Samuel Beckett’s shorts. A familiar definition is that theater requires at least one actor and at least one audience member and that definitely covers a lot of stuff. But - what’s an actor? What’s an audience member? While most plays use human actors, there are plays performed by robots and laptops with voice synthesizers. There are plays performed by animals and by puppets, though usually there’s a human helping out with those. I hope. Sooooo … Is everything theater? If you want a really expansive definition, the composer John Cage said that “theater takes place all the time, wherever one is; an art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.” So…is this theater? Well, not for you. You’re watching a video recorded earlier. But here. In this room. I’m performing, right? And there’s an audience if you include Stan and Zulaiha watching me. Am I doing theater? Want to hear my “To be or not to be,” guys? Yorick? Aw. They say no every time! A plague on both your houses. What is and isn’t theater is the kind of question that can make your head spin. We’ll come back to it a couple of times, especially when we talk about political theater and protest theater and immersive theater, but for now we’ll use a more narrow definition: theater is a deliberate performance created by live actors and intended for a live audience, typically making use of scripted language. We may meet some exceptions along the way—lookin’ at you, robo-actors—but this’ll work for now. And, before we get too far, let’s confront the perennial controversy: should you spell theatre re or er? And the short answer is, both of them are fine! RE is more common outside of the US but for some folks, this spelling acts as a shibboleth. You may have heard someone say “a theater is a building; but the theatre is an art!” or “theater is a destination, but theatre is a journey”. Here at Crash Course, we don’t mind either... but have chosen to stick with er for consistency. There’s no origin story for theater that everyone agrees on, but there are some theories we can explore. In the West, at least, up until the sixth or seventh century BCE we didn’t have theater as we know it today, but we did have religious ritual, which can get pretty theatrical. Rituals are often ways of mediating between the human and the supernatural. They can serve to enact or re-enact significant events in the human or supernatural world—births, marriages, deaths, harvests. In ritual, according to the mythology scholar Mircea Eliade, “The time of the event that the ritual commemorates or reenacts is made present.” So ritual represents, literally re-presents—old stories or ideas and makes them happen now, which is a lot like what theater does. This doesn’t mean that ritual is identical with theater. Ritual is sacred, and theater is usually secular (though not always, as we’ll see!). Theater and ritual can draw on similar mythological sources, but ritual typically treats those sources as fact and theater as fiction. In ritual the audience often participates; in theatre, they usually sit politely. Unless there’s audience participation, which is universally adored. In the late nineteenth century, a group of classical scholars decided to search for the origins of theater. They took an anthropological approach and saw theater as a direct evolution of religious ritual. This theory really got going with James Frazer, whom we also discuss in the Crash Course Mythology episode on Theories of Myth. In The Golden Bough, written between 1896 and 1915, Frazer and his contemporaries, the Cambridge Ritualists (btw, this is obvs the name of my new band) tried to take a “scientific approach” to the question of theater’s origins. He looked around at so-called “primitive” societies in Africa and Asia, societies he didn’t really “know much about,” and decided that theater had emerged as a sophisticated refining of ritual. According to Frazer, here’s how it goes: You start out worshipping some kind of god or practice, and that worship gets distilled into rituals to attract the attention of that god or guarantee good fortune. Once your primitive society really gets going, those rituals generate myths and those myths get transmuted ... into theater. Eventually you get jazz hands and sequins. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan puts it, in this view, “Art became a sort of civilized substitute for magical games and rituals…. Art like game became a mimetic echo of and a relief from the old magic of total involvement.” For an example of the (sometimes questionable) evidence that the Cambridge Ritualists drew on to support their idea that ritual evolved into theater, let’s look at the Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BCE, describing a ceremony he witnessed in Egypt. Take the stage, Thoughtbubble: Thought Bubble This ceremony occurs at sunset in a temple. Some priests attend to a statue of Ares, but most of the people involved are doing something very different: “The majority of them hold clubs made of wood and stand at the temple's entrance while others make vows, more than a thousand men, all holding clubs... And those few left behind with the statue pull a four-wheeled wagon carrying the shrine and the statue which is in the shrine, and the others standing at the front gates do not let them enter.” If things seem tense to you… very perceptive! Probably the clubs that tipped you off, right? Herodotus says “Those who vowed to defend the god strike those resisting [...] As I understand, many even die from their wounds...” The ritual continues all through the night. And, as you might if you were Herodotus, he asks some locals why the poundings? They tell him: “There lived in this temple Ares' mother, and Ares who was raised elsewhere came -- after having become a man -- wishing to lay with his mother, and the servants of his mother, for not having seen him before, did not look the other way when he entered, rather they fended him off, and he fetching men from another city handled the servants roughly and went inside to his mother. For this reason this fight in behalf of Ares at the festival has become a tradition, they say.” Thanks Thoughtbubble. So - the Ritualists look to stories like this to illustrate their idea that worship becomes ritual. Ritual becomes myth. Myth becomes performance. Someone writes a few songs to go along with the skull-splitting, someone else turns the battle into a dance, let it all simmer for a millennia or two, and voila “West Side Story”! This ritualism theory is useful in some ways and as we’ll see in the next episode, it fits very nicely with Greek drama, mostly because the whole theory was pretty much based on Greek drama. That’s a welcome fix to how previous generations of scholars viewed Greek drama—as something very pure and stately, not as something that might have evolved from passion and magic–but this theory causes problems when you try to apply the history of Greek Drama to OTHER dramatic traditions. Turns out, Frazer and his colleagues didn’t actually know all that much about the so-called “primitive” societies whose theater they wanted to study; the rich and sophisticated cultures the Ritualists encountered throughout Africa and Asia were lost on the Cambridge types ... because Euro-centrism. So they did a lot of pretty non-scientific guessing, working backward from what they knew about classical theater and hypothesizing about what kind of rituals may have produced it. Frazer also operates with the underlying belief that all societies basically evolve in the same way and that even though, in his view, so-called primitive societies are inherently inferior, given enough time and care they’ll get more and more sophisticated until they too can produce “Cats.” Okay, Frazer didn’t talk a lot about Broadway musicals, but maybe you’re starting to understand a couple of the major problems with this theory and the assumption that all societies are on a trajectory toward Western civilization, which in this view is getting better and better all the time. (This view, by the way, is known as “positivism”). Another theory that gets going after Frazer is the idea that people create myths out of a desire to explain and rationalize the world around them. In ritualism, myths and theater emerge as a response to pre-existing rituals. But in this other theory, known as functionalism, myths serve an etiological function, a way of explaining how and why things came to be the way they are. According to one of the leading functionalist theorists, Bronislaw Malinowski, myth “is a statement of primeval reality which lives in the institutions and pursuits of a community. It justifies by precedent the existing order.” Unlike the ritualists, the functionalists didn’t assume that all societies operate and evolve in the same way or will create the same kinds of myths. Malinowski didn’t really discuss theater, but some of his followers did, and they locked on to the idea that many early Greek dramas have their origins in myth and some of those myths are etiological. The “Oresteia,” explains the legal system, “Prometheus Bound,” explains that liver is tasty. JK. It explains how we get fire... and technology. So, if myths explain the world, and theatre is based in myth, we can think about theater as a way of explaining the world to ourselves. But such a view has some drawbacks. Take one of the very earliest recorded plays, Aeschylus’s “The Persians. That was based in contemporaneous historical events, not in myth. Besides the ritualists and the functionalists, there are a few other theories, too. One is that theater derives at least in part from the clown figure – who is sort of the secular equivalent of the shaman in early societies. Their job was to make fun of the headman and other establishment figures and practices. We can maybe see this influence in satyr plays, which we’ll visit in the next episode. And it’s linked, at least a little, to the idea that theater may originate from games and the playful instincts of humankind, a phenomenon called the ludic impulse. Another related theory, which really gets going with Aristotle, is that human beings have a “mimetic impulse”: humans have an in-built desire to imitate, to act, to pretend--and that’s how we learn. According to Aristotle, this desire eventually gets refined and codified into theater. To sum up: Ritual, myth, clowning, playing games, playing pretend. Somehow out of all of this or maybe out of none of it we get “Hamilton.” And now let’s turn to our last question for today: Why should we care? In other words, why does theater matter? Well, that’s a question we’ll be coming back to throughout the series as we see how and why people make theatre, and the impact it has throughout history. But let me leave you with one idea borrowed from Percy from Percy Bysshe Shelley: “The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself.” Thanks for watching and ... curtain!
PART ONE - What is Theatre? (by Marvin Carlson)
Imitation
One of these basic activities is clearly imitation. Paleolithic cave paintings provide indisputable evidence of the antiquity of this interest, and whatever we know or can speculate about early humans indicates that this fascination with imitation was not confined to graphic representation, but was also carried out as an embodied practice. Supernatural figures, animals, and iconic human figures surely were represented by performers within their community just as they are represented on the walls of Paleolithic caves. Another activity found in all human cultures is some form of storytelling. Among the most ancient forms of the story that we know are the cultural myths, stories of the gods, of how the world and man came to be and of the dynamics of human interaction and of man’s interaction with the world. Usually the person telling p. 2these stories holds a special position in the society, sometimes simply an entertainer but also at times a seer, a guide, a shaman. There has always been a close connection between imitation and storytelling. An important part of storytelling has been the assumption of various roles and voices by the storyteller, and one may consider much theatre as built of the same material as storytelling, but enacted imitatively with entire bodies rather than in the inflections of a single voice.
One of the best-known basic formulas of drama was provided by theorist Eric Bentley in 1965: ‘A impersonates B while C looks on.’ The two verbs are key, with the first stressing the idea of active imitation and the second that of spectatorship. Simple as this formula is, it allows an important distinction to be made between such closely related forms as dance and storytelling (with the important proviso that both can move within the realm of theatre if ‘impersonation’ is involved). The formula assumes, of course, that A, B, and C are all humans, and this is essentially true, though there have been plays in which human actors impersonated animals, insects, birds, plants, and even inanimate objects.
In fact, A need not be human either, and in a significant part of the world is not. A may be an inanimate object manipulated by a human, in short a puppet. Puppet theatre in the Western world has often been considered a minor form, suitable for children or simple folk entertainment, but not worthy of consideration by serious students of theatre. This attitude seems to be in the process of changing, however, with puppet theatre growing in respectability, visibility, and sophistication, and as Western audiences become more aware of the rich puppet theatre traditions in other parts of the world. It should also be noted that while Bentley’s definition covers the essential matters of imitation and spectatorship, it excludes the crucial other component, storytelling. Hence we should add the insight of Aristotle, to create a formula more like ‘A imitates B performing an action while C looks on.’
We Need Theatre to Exist, and Maybe Research Can Prove Its Necessity
26 June 2018
Is theatre necessary? This is an age-old question. It is so old that perhaps, at times, we grow tired of asking it. We shouldn’t. In its answer lies the Holy Grail. Proving theatre necessary to the mechanical function of the human body might lead to a renaissance in its funding, attendance, and growth. Imagine a world in which theatre practitioners, when asked why theatre should be funded, could answer definitively, “Because it is necessary to human life.” Perhaps that world is not as far away as it seems.
For years, theatre administrators and practitioners have been making salient arguments as to why theatre is important, as opposed to necessary, with little result. It has been proven, empirically and statistically, that theatre is valuable in promoting student learning, driving economic growth, encouraging urban renewal, and fostering technological innovation. However, funding and audiences have continued to shrink.
An article in the Atlantic from January 2016 reported that, as of 2014, “only 4 percent of all arts funding in America ($1.2 billion) [came] from public sources” and “while funding [had] increased numerically it [had] not kept up with inflation, leading to a decrease of around 26 percent in public art grant money since 1995.” Moreover, a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) report on arts participation concluded that, since 1982, there had been “a steady decline in the rates of adult attendance at … musical and non-musical plays.”
In this light, arguments for the importance of theatre seem to find little traction with audiences or funders. Many appear to consider theatre dispensable. So, perhaps it is time to reframe the discussion. Maybe arguments for the necessity of theatre might gain more ground. Thankfully, the NEA seems to be taking new strides in that direction.
In 2011, the organization “convened” an interagency task force to “encourage more and better research on how the arts can help people reach their full potential at all stages of life.” The task force is comprised of federal agencies (including the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Education) whose purpose is overseeing policy on healthcare, science, and education. In September 2012, they held a one-day workshop of researchers, scientists, and artists to determine whether current research methods were effectively measuring the impact of the arts on human health. The workshop was created in response to a growing body of evidence that arts therapies should play a larger role in traditional healthcare.
In theatre, this can be seen in programs like the following:
Timeslips, based in Milwaukee, which treats patients with Alzheimer’s through group storytelling.
Trauma Drama, developed by the Trauma Center in Boston, which uses theatre as a means of treating children who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder.
The research of Tony and Helga Noice at Elmhurst College in Chicago, which measures the physiological benefits of acting classes for older adults by using neuroimaging to capture brain function data.
The research of Blythe Corbett at Vanderbilt University, which indicates drama classes can be beneficial therapy for improving social skills in children with autism.
While the benefits of these programs have been closely documented, current research methods have not been able to precisely measure their effects.
Imagine a world in which theatre practitioners, when asked why theatre should be funded, could answer definitively, 'Because it is necessary to human life.' Perhaps that world is not as far away as it seems.
At the end of the NEA workshop, the participants reached consensus that new research methods would have to be developed in order to understand the exact way the arts impact the human body. As a result, the task force called for the funding of new and non-traditional research methods that could provide better empirical evidence. This call convinced the NEA to take action.
In December 2016, the NEA published the Guide to Community-Engaged Research in the Arts and Health, which offers a blueprint for partnerships between arts, science, research, and health institutions to develop new research techniques and includes a database of government grants that could provide funding. That same month, the NEA’s Office of Research & Analysis published a new research agenda for 2017–21 that features, among other things, a refined focus on developing new research techniques to measure arts impacts on both individual and societal health outcomes.
These steps are significant and represent a top-down approach to proving the beneficial impact of music, art, dance, and theatre on our physical health. They herald the possibility of significant advancement towards understanding how our basic survival is related to the arts. But will the results lead to understanding the necessity of theatre, or will they simply lead to more findings about how important the arts are as a palliative to human ailments? If empirical data can prove the arts positively impact biomechanical function, perhaps connections can be drawn to the indispensability of theatre as an art form. But is there another level of inquiry that can be engaged simultaneously, and in complement, with this scientific, top-down approach? If one has a tree whose branches are in ill health and whose leaves are withering, one’s first impulse might be to treat the leaves and branches. Another might be to look at its roots.
a portrait of aristotle
In Aristotle’s Poetics, the philosopher attributes the existence of drama to the human need to mimic. Aristotle’s recognition of humanity’s mimetic instinct has since become the subject of ongoing scientific research and is generally accepted by scientists as an essential element of human composition. In 2017, researchers from the University of California, Riverside concluded that mimesis comes from an innate urge of the brain to “empathize and affiliate.” The study’s lead researcher, Professor Lawrence Rosenblum, was quoted in a Telegraph article saying: “Humans are incessant imitators. We intentionally imitate subtle aspects of each other’s mannerisms, postures and facial expressions. We also imitate each other’s speech patterns, including inflections, talking speed and speaking time.”
This lends scientific acknowledgement to what Shakespeare so insightfully intoned centuries before us: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.”
Could the Holy Grail of why theatre is necessary lie somewhere between the studies of why theatre cures and why mimesis is essential to physical health?
In his book The Necessity of Theater, recognized philosopher and classicist scholar Paul Woodruff defines theatre as “the art of watching and being watched”—theatre, derived from mimesis, is all around us in the daily practice of human life. Mimicking is ubiquitous in public behavior: judges mimic impartiality, politicians mimic genuineness, the bored feign interest while the interested feign boredom. We mimic confidence in our job interviews, bravery at the funeral of a loved one, happiness so as not to spoil a good party. Even on social media, we mimic being the perfect cook, having the perfect vacation, having the perfect family, simply so others will follow our posts.
a mime and man sit on a bench
"The Mime and His New Best Friend" by Thomas Hawk.
Woodruff’s definition echoes the observations made by the University of Edinburgh’s renowned sociological scholar Erving Goffman, who, in his groundbreaking book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, frames human interactions in dramaturgical terms and posits that humans use their mimetic instincts (empathizing and affiliating) to obtain the things required to sustain and enrich our psychological and physical well-being. From Goffman’s observations grew the paradigm of dramaturgical sociology, which argues that human behavior depends on time, place, and audience, just like theatre.
The recognition of our biological impulse to empathize and affiliate through mimesis (i.e. theatre) can also be found in the hard sciences. Growing bodies of scientific inquiry, such as the work of Matthew Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger at University of California, Los Angeles, indicate socialization actually changes the physical structure of the brain and that loneliness, isolation, and social rejection can produce negative physiological impacts on the human bio-mechanism, including high blood pressure, the erosion of memory and cognitive function, and the breakdown of cell tissue. Taking this into account, perhaps the reason we possess an instinct to empathize and affiliate through mimesis is to protect our biological mechanism from physical harms resulting from disassociation.
This line of reasoning can be taken further. Alzheimer’s, post-traumatic stress disorder, and autism share a common symptom of disassociation. Data affirms theatrical mimesis as a therapeutic treatment for these conditions. It is logical, then, to conclude that the conditions of these diseases arise from the lack of ability to empathize and affiliate through the mimetic impulse—in which case this ability could be deemed necessary to human biological function? Is it not then possible that theatre, which arose from the biological drive to mimic in order to protect our physical well-being, could be inextricably bound to biomechanical function? Could the Holy Grail of why theatre is necessary lie somewhere between the studies of why theatre cures and why mimesis is essential to physical health?
In its 2011 report, the NEA identified the number one reason people attend arts events: to socialize with friends. This fact is vital to drawing the link between mimesis, theatre, and socialization as a routine of biomechanical maintenance. Perhaps the root of why theatre exists lies in that very simple fact: it gives us a significant dose of the socialization our body requires to function.
While we fund new ways to measure how the arts can treat our physical ailments, might it not also be worthwhile to fund new lines of inquiry into what basic physiological need caused theatre to exist in the first place?
Why is theatre necessary? Perhaps the answer is only a research step away.
he Psychology of Performing Arts: Theatre and
human expression
Transcript
Date: Tuesday, 10 March 2009 - 12:00AM
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERFORMING ARTS:
THEATRE AND HUMAN EXPRESSION
Dr Glenn Wilson
Theatre is an arena in which we can mentally play, acting out our fears and fantasies in an experimental way. It excites new ideas
and perspectives and provides us with rehearsal for life. In the broad sense, theatre can be taken as referring to films and TV as
well as live theatre - indeed, any sort of entertainment that includes performers and audience (sometimes intertwined in
complex ways) and which requires imagination to make it real.
Central to much of theatre is
human conflict - the characters struggle to attain their ends against opposition, mostly from other
characters.
Role-playing puts us into the head of each character in turn, allowing us to see things from their viewpoint. By
observing how they deal with their problems, sometimes adaptively, sometimes self-destructively, we learn lessons in how to
choose among our own options.
An important function of theatre is
stimulation. Theatre adds magic and thrills to our mundane lives - whether it be disturbing
(tragedy & horror), ridiculous (comedy) or romantic (esp. musicals). Modern civilisation has become overly safe. From time to
time we need to rock the boat and test the alarms - to try out novel, challenging experiences and sample danger, albeit within a
safe context. Theatre and films give us a chance to rehearse reactions to rare, dreaded occurrences such as rape, earthquake,
fire or death of a loved one, helping us to cope with such events should they occur in real life.
As a case study, consider the
myth of Dracula - perhaps the most popular of all themes in the horror genre. The story derives
from several fears that were widespread in 18th Century Europe. (1) The
werewolf legend, concerning a half-human beast that
beast that changes form in darkness. (2)
Pacts with the devil, in which people were believed to have traded their souls for
immortality. (3) Tales of
bloodsucking bats that transmit rabies - the 'infection' idea. (4) Actual episodes of people coming back
to life after misdiagnosis of death and hasty burial in shallow graves (the
undead).
Count Dracula was partly modelled on Vlad the Impaler, son of a bloodthirsty Romanian ruler dubbed Dracul (dragon). He himself
was called 'Dracula' (son of the dragon). Central to the story, especially as starring Christopher Lee in the Hammer film series, is
the
seduction metaphor. Tall, dark, taciturn stranger makes sudden appearance at the casement of a buxom maiden's
bedroom in the dead of night. With dark, compelling eyes and supreme authority he penetrates a vulnerable part of her body,
drawing blood and claiming her soulful devotion forever. This is Jane Austen plus the frisson of fear.
The experience of extreme fear is sometimes said to be cathartic.
Catharsis (from a Greek term meaning
purification) refers to
the purging of pent-up emotions that is supposed to follow the viewing of tragedy. It is similar to the Freudian idea of
abreaction
- the theory that neurosis is relieved by bringing repressed childhood trauma to consciousness, using procedures such as
hypnosis, free association and dream analysis.
Psychodrama is a kind of group psychotherapy based on role-playing and
dramatic improvisation around life situations relevant to clients' problems. The
safe distance hypothesis states that catharsis
occurs in the theatre when there is (1) sufficient identification with the characters and action that previously unresolved
emotions are aroused, and (2) sufficient cues that the present situation is safe (the reassurance that 'it is only a play'). The idea
that one benefits from a dilute dose of an original trauma is reminiscent both of homeopathy and the principle of inoculation.
The therapeutic value of catharsis is, however, a matter for debate. Research on
debriefing therapy for post-traumatic stress
disorder indicates that the simple reliving in imagination of a traumatic event is unhelpful - it may even make matters worse.
What seems to be necessary is some kind of cognitive restructuring, a reframing of the original event as less threatening. The
experience of theatre might provide this, if only to help put our own problems in perspective. Whatever our troubles they are
unlikely to be as bad as those Othello or King Lear, so we alight from the theatre much as we awaken from a nightmare -
relieved that it is not for real and recognising our plight as relatively trivial.
The theory of catharsis has been applied to the effects of media violence. The suggestion is that viewing violence
should
reduce the urge to act violently in real life. Most research, however, points to the conclusion that the viewing of
violence
increases the likelihood of real violence, through
imitation and
desensitisation. This is especially true when the
implied
message is that violence is a normal and acceptable way of resolving disputes. Of course there individual differences in
susceptibility to the effects of media violence - not everybody is affected - but if only a small proportion of people are tilted
toward atrocities, this would be cause for concern. Sex in themedia probably follows similar rules - messages regarding what is
normal are received, which might include dangerous 'myths' (e.g., the belief that women will get around to enjoy being raped if
only you get them started).
If exposure to horror and fear is cathartic in that anxiety is reduced, why would the same not apply to hostility? Why would media
violence not lead to a decrease in real life violence? For one thing, violence is not always associated with anger - sometimes it is
just a cold-blooded attempt to gain advantage. The robber who presents a sawn-off shotgun at the bank is not angry with the
teller, he just wants the money. Thus there may not be any emotion to be 'purged'. What might be reduced by repeated
exposure to violent images or sequences is
fear of the consequences of actingviolently, both to oneself and others (this is what
is called
desensitisation)
. In a similar way, viewers may become desensitised to the possible negative consequences of sexual
promiscuity or rape.
Some have questioned the strength of the association between media violence and violent behaviour, noting that the
correlations, although significant, are usually quite low (around .2 or .3). A meta-analysis by Huesmann (2007) suggests that the
effect size is comparable or greater than many other widely accepted threats to public health. In fact, it is second only in
magnitude to the association between smoking and lung cancer and higher than such well-recognised links as that between
HIV/AIDS and the failure to use condoms.
Against that, we need to remember that the cause-and-effect patterns underlying correlations can be complicated.
The
Columbine Schoolshooting was one of many incidents where similarities were noted between an orgy of violence and a
particular film (
The Basketball Diaries), which was then blamed for the atrocity. Tempting as this attribution may be, there are
reasons to be cautious:
(1) There are so many violent movies around that similarities may be coincidental -often it turns out the suspect has never seen
the material they are said to have copied.
(2) Psychopaths seek out fictional material that locks into their deviant fantasies whatever they happen to be - thus yielding an
association, but with reversed cause and effect.
(3) Atrocities occur without any apparent link to violent media (e.g., the Dunblane massacre).
What spree killers seem have in common is an interest in guns and access to them, a sense of impotence, social alienation and
fantasies of nihilism. If media exposure is involved it is more likely to be down to a cumulative, 'drip-drip' effect, than direct
copying of a fictional event.
The evidence that media violence increases violence in real life inevitably leads to calls for
censorship. But there is a problem -
who decides what is right for whom? History shows that what seems subversive at one time and place often appears ludicrously
tame in retrospect. Authorities try to suppress revolutionary art because it threatens the status quo, hence their own privileged
position. Religious texts are connected with more atrocities than any obscene material, but few seek to censor them - probably
it is understood that they provide structure and comfort to many people and those that appear to be adversely affected more
often use scriptures to
justify their atrocity rather than instigate it. Rock music and idols function to represent teenage
rebellion, hence inevitably offend the parental generation and come across as anti-social - attempts to suppress such material
play into the hands of the perpetrators.
Probably more important than the words and imagery per se, is the attitude or
moral message implicit within a media
communication.
Tom and Jerry is extremely violent, but the lesson is that 'bullies will get their just deserts'. Films
like
Rambo or
Dirty Harry, on the other hand, may be harmful because they imply that 'might is right'. Today we might reasonably
be concerned about the disrespect and interpersonal abuse endemic in soaps like
Eastenders that are widely watched by
impressionable young people, and reality TV shows like
Big Brother,which teach that vacuous people can become famous, not
through good works, but by mere exposure. The gap between fame and notoriety is fast vanishing.
Dramatists draw on personal experience and conflicts to create characters and situations. Where their themes are repetitive, we
may suppose that they betray personal preoccupations. In opera, Puccini featured frail, tragic women, Britten misunderstood
boys, Verdi fathers losing daughters, Mozart sexual infidelity and Wagner the quest for ideals. Connections with their life style
and difficulties are apparent to their biographers. W.S. Gilbert was obsessed with torture, executions and matronly women, all of
which simultaneously terrified and excited him. Critics have pointed out, perhaps cruelly, that
The Phantom of the Opera (young
soprano sponsored by disfigured but misjudged composer makes stunning debut) has autobiographical overtones for Andrew
Lloyd Weber.
The appeal of a play depends on the author's fantasies being widely recognized and shared within the audience. Freudians
maintain that Hamlet's indecisiveness about whether to kill his stepfather derives from unresolved
Oedipus Complex, which
being widespread in the population, accounts for our fascination with Shakespeare's play. Any man with an ambitious wife could
identify with the mess Macbeth gets himself into. Opera, being expensive to mount, is bound to be highly selective, so the
themes described above must have broad appeal beyond the personal obsessions of the composers for their works to have
survived.
Many writers have observed a relationship between madness and creative genius in the arts. Anecdotally, the link seems most
striking with bipolar disorder, especially the manic phase. There is also some empirical support - e.g., children of BD patients
score higher on creativity tests, suggesting a genetic link. The connection may be mediated by dopamine functions in the brain,
which are concerned with reward and arousal. Dopamine promotes loose associations (bizarre ideas), some of which (by
chance?) appear as genius. However, meta-analysis of the research literature suggests that the link between creativity and
madness may be over-egged; 15/29 studies found no significant correlation (Waddell, 1998). The appearance of a connection
may be enhanced by the profile and eloquence of famous people on the edge of sanity, like Robert Schumann, Salvador Dali
and Van Gogh.
Certain images and ideas have been of such great evolutionary importance that we store prototypes in the brain that
predispose us to react in certain ways to them - an infant's cry, the human face, mating signals (
innate releasing mechanisms).
Similarly, Richard Wagner and Carl Jung (among others) noted that myths around the world repeat quintessential characters and
situations that reveal human nature in profound ways (
archetypes). For example, the idea of a
dragon appears in myths and fairy
tales of all cultures, predating the discovery of dinosaur fossils. This may represent a residual fear of giant reptiles dating from a
time when our mammalian ancestors struggled with them for survival on the earth. Our prehistoric terror emerges in the
popularity of museum exhibits and films like
Jurassic Park.
In
The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), Joseph Campbell outlined a core story in literature/drama - the epic journey of a
brave, if naïve, young man who battles against tremendous odds to achieve self-knowledge, manhood, wealth, love or social
deliverance. The typical sequence of this
monomyth is as follows:
(1) It begins in the
ordinary world - the hero is innocent; often he has lost his parents, or they are unusual in some way (e.g.
gods, aliens or close relatives).
(2) The
call to adventure - which is often initially refused.
(3) The hero
meets a mentor - who teaches him his true destiny and elicits powers he was previously unaware of.
(4) There are
trials,
initiations and the
acquisition of skills needed for the journey. A commitment to change is made.
(5) The
supreme ordeal - some remarkable exploit is successfully completed (a dragon is slain, enemies conquered, a beautiful
princess saved.
(6) The hero
returns in triumph,with enhanced power and self-knowledge, to save the world.
Preceding Campbell, Wagner's
Ring Cycle was a deliberate pastiche of the hero's journey as distilled from the myths and sagas
of many cultures. The settings, characters and conflicts were infantile,ancestral, timeless and profound. For
Star Wars, George
Lucas consulted Campbell in drafting characters and situations that were archetypal. In Jungian terms, Luke Skywalker is the
ego
(hero), Princess Leia the
anima (female spirit), Han Solo the
animus (male spirit), Darth Vader the
Shadow (dark side of the self),
and Obi wan Kenobi the
Sage (mentor)
. As with Siegfried, the adventures of Luke Skywalker follow the general sequence of the
hero's journey as described by Campbell.
London based film analyst Kal Bashir maintains that most blockbuster films follow a similar template, corresponding to the
Campbell monomyth. In an amusing exercise, he shows how a synopsis of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone can be
superimposed upon that of
Star Wars so they appear as essentially the same story with the names changed.
What is the psychological appeal of the monomyth? At one level it reflects
individual ambitiousness - the drive toward mastery
and achievement, to conquer enemies, to win love and admiration. This is especially rife in men but women dream of a knight in
shining armour who will bear them away from drudgery and strife to protect and support them forever. The monster from whom
the maiden is liberated may represent a restrictive father who has kept them in psychological captivity - hence some kind
of
sexual awakening is common in the story. A related theme that is endemic in comic opera is
the guardian outwitted (or
'there's no fool like an old fool') in which an elderly man is tricked out of his claim to an attractive young woman by a young
pretender and his accomplices (e.g.,
Don Pasquale; The Barber of Seville).
The monomyth also satisfies
society's craving for a saviour - an exceptional individual who will deliver us from evil. If such a
person does not exist they are invented (c.f.
The Life of Brian). People seek idols in sport, music, politics and religion, as well as
in literature/drama. Concern with the
genetic background of the hero has obvious evolutionary significance. Within limits,
exceptional humans can be bred like racehorses, so parents who are themselves exceptional are the most likely source of the
hero. However, we are often reminded that a genius or leader may be spawned of ordinary, unprepossessing parents, and the
hero may emerge from the most unlikely places - a lowly stable, a flying saucer, or a Swiss patents office.
In examining the characters and themes that recur in theatre, film and literature we learn much about human nature - a nature
built upon instincts that have served our survival since prehistory. Theatre is one of the higher cultural activities that mark us as
imaginative, creative and truly human; at the same time it reflects our animal origins and recalls the early struggles of our
ancestors.
Bibliography
Wilson, G.D. (2002)
Psychology for Performing Artists (Second Edition). Whurr, London (now part of John Wiley). The majority of
other references are to be found within this.
Huesmann, L.R. (2007) The impact of electronic media violence: scientific research and theory.
Journal of Adolescent Health, 41
(6) Supplement, S6-S13.
Waddell, C. (1998) Creativity and mental illness: Is there a link?
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 43, 166-172.
Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth
-----President John F. Kennedy
SPRING 2025
Philip Valle
[email protected]
Phone TBA
Classroom: Spanos Theatre - Person/Asynchronous/Hybrid
NOTE: Course meetings ONLY on Thursdays 9:10 - 11:00am
Office: Face to Face Hours: W 9:30 - 12:00 Bldg. #45 Office #203
And by Appointment
FIND the FULL SYLLABUS HERE
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Course Syllabus (abbreviated)
COURSE OBJECTIVES
To explore the principles and trends of theatre from Greeks to Present
To investigate the production process including writing, acting, directing and all elements of design
To define theatrical terminology, including methods, writings, aesthetics, and technology.
To write well-crafted critiques of contemporary performances--addressing specific elements of the production and evaluating their significance in shaping the final product.
STUDENT OUTCOMES
BY THE CONCLUSION OF THIS COURSE, Students should be able to:
Assess written data and apply it to history
Create a "well-reasoned response" to course readings
Synthesize the content of a play
Critically self-examine your own views and opinions
Provide evidence in the form of argument(s)
Observe a cultural phenomenon and ascertain its cultural significance
Evaluate and critically respond to live (recorded) theatrical performances
REQUIRED READING (Please Note: you will need to buy 2 of the following)
She Kills Monsters - Nguyen (pdf provided)
The Flick- Baker - Samuel French, 2014. Acting Edition. ISBN: 0573702039
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Stephens (pdf provided)
Disgraced – Akhtar - Little Brown & Company ISBN: 9780316324465
ASSIGNMENTS Points Percentage
2 Performance Critiques x 100 = 200 %20
6 Course Quizzes x 70 = 420 %42
1 Comprehensive Exam x 300 = 300 %30
1 Final Exam x 80 = 80 %8
Total 1000 100%
GRADING - NOTE ON Curving exams and FINAL GRADES: ALL of the quizzes and exams are curved. This means any question missed by over 50 % of the class is tossed and those points awarded equally to all. In the case of final grades, the grade earned (and posted on Canvas) after the course final is that submitted: no FINAL grade is ever "Rounded Up."
Ethics and Academia (from Cal Poly's Student Rights and Responsibilities)
Cheating includes, but is not limited to: lying; copying from another’s test, unless such discussion is specifically authorized by the instructor; taking or receiving copies of an exam without the permission of the instructor, using or displaying notes, cheat sheets, or other information devices inappropriate to the prescribed test conditions; and allowing someone other than the officially enrolled student to represent same.” The Campus Administrative Manual
Plagiarism is “defined as the act of using the ideas or work of another person or persons as if they were one’s own, without giving proper credit to the source. Such an act is not plagiarism if it is ascertained that the ideas were arrived at through independent reasoning or logic or where the thought or idea is common knowledge. Acknowledgment of an original author or source must be made through appropriate references, i.e., quotation marks, footnotes, or commentary. Examples of plagiarism include, but are not limited to, the following: the submission of work, either in part or in whole, completed by another; failure to give credit for ideas, statements, facts or conclusions which rightfully belong to another; failure to use quotation marks when quoting directly from another, whether it be a paragraph, a sentence, or even a part thereof; close and lengthy paraphrasing of another’s writing without credit or originality; use of another’s project or program or part thereof without giving credit.” The Campus Administrative Manual
If you are caught cheating or plagiarizing, the ramifications could result in one of the following:
Failing grade on the project and/or failing grade in the class;
Probation, suspension and/or expulsion from your major, program and/or University.
Late Work (per university policy)
All work is due on the date and at the time assigned. Late work is never accepted without a written note from a doctor, a religious holiday, or a documented family emergency.
Course Policy on Submitted Files
Please note that ALL course documents submitted are required to be PDFs. Do not submit links to a Google doc. Likewise, any PDF submitted MUST be reviewed prior to posting. ANY corrupted PDF will receive a “0” with no opportunity for make-up.
Students with DRC Contracts
Persons who wish to request disability-related accommodations should contact the Disability Resource Center in Building 124, Room 119. Phone: (805) 756-1395 or (805) 756-6266 (TTY). Office hours are Monday-Friday from 8:00 AM – 4:30 PM. Some accommodations may take up to several weeks to arrange. If you are a student with a disability, please consider discussing your needs and possible accommodations with me as soon as possible. In all cases, due date extensions are to be agreed upon BEFORE the assigned due date. This means, please send a notification email AT LEAST 24 hours prior to assigned deadline. Likewise, in an effort to keep students from falling behind, any extension should not exceed 24 hours. For our course, as all assignments are due on Sundays at 11:59pm. This means any extension would be due by the following Monday at 11:59pm.
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Featured Designer - Es Devlin
Note: Ms. Devlin currently had a show in NY (through August 2024) featuring a wide-range of her works. It's amazing stuff--because it crosses so many boundaries and includes so many other artists and important collaborations. Here's a link to the show.Links to an external site.
ED
Ms. Devlin is the "go to" designer for everyone from Bregenz Festival to Kanye, the National Theatre and more
Bregenz
Bregenz Festival (Design Es Devlin)
Lighting Design
Kanye
adele
Adele
KarenWong
Beyoncé