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DRAMATIC GENRE, RITUAL, CONELICT RESOLUTION
hand, there is the systematic thesis that all drama at all times is also ritual in
principle and essence, and always has ritual components. Most or even all of
the contributors to the present volume will be more interested in the second
thesis: that ritual is always at work in drama.
Another distinction should be underlined. It does make a difference if we
are a.) practicing drama theory and viewing specific forms of drama or entire
genres as developments or conceptual correlates of certain rituals (e.g., an
entire tragedy or even the genre of tragedy as an adaptation or "translation" of
sacrificial rites); or if we are b.) doing criticism and discussing specific ritual
elements within a play (e.g., as inserts that fulfil a specific function within a
performance, like a marriage ritual). It is one of the merits of Fischer’s book
that it is not content with merely observing isolated ritualistic components in
a play; rather, it reserves the category “poetic rituality” for those performances
which have elevated ritual to be the foundational, organizing, and unifying
principle that informs all of their parts. (Note that this approach may thus
presuppose a definition of the artwork as an organic whole.)*
While the most conspicuous use of ritual in theatrical performance appears
to occur in the tragic function, there is another, seemingly diametrically op¬
posed use of ritual in performance that has attracted the majority of the re¬
maining attention: the comic one. We can observe such an alternative function
in, for example, the communal rite of mocking the old king and inaugurating
the adolescent king, and the subsequent feast of rejoicing. Note that, in this
case, we may already have discovered the possibility of sequencing two ritual
elements in such a way as to promote an overall conflict resolution.
Continuing our inquiry in this direction, we are in a position to ask: can
ritual contribute toward aims beyond the two fundamental yet divisive genres
of tragedy and comedy? May ritual help establish a fundamental pattern of
dramatic action that would engage in serious conflict but eventually lead it
toward productive resolution? We know ritual can be employed in destructive
fashion, but how might ritual further a play’s non-exclusionary objectives,
even reconciliatory ones, on stage and outside of the theater? Both Turner and
Schechner see ritual as transformative, most often in productive ways; and
the drama of reconciliation by definition aims to be transformative toward
conflict resolution. Ritual and drama of reconciliation thus appear to be able
to function together. If ritual, as Braungart emphasizes, possesses both an
ritual transforming into theatrical performance, see Victor Turner: Frame, Flow and Reflec¬
tion: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6 (1979),
490-494; and Victor Turner: Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in
Comparative Symbology, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, New York,
Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982, 20-60.
For the distinction between ritualistic elements in drama versus ritualas informing an entire
play’s shape, see Thomas B. Stroup: Ritualand Ceremony in the Drama, Comparative Drama
11.2 (1977), 139-146, 142, 144.