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VALERE NOVARINA AND JANOS PILINSZKY OR THE POETIC THEATER OF UNSELFING RITUAL
each other as more complete beings. In Turner’s classic work From Ritual to
Theatre he changes the adjective “liminal” to “liminoid” when referring to art
(and religion): “I had distinguished ‘liminal’ from ‘liminoid’ by associating
the first with obligatory, tribal participation in ritual and the second as char¬
acterizing religious forms voluntarily produced, usually with recognition of
individual authorship, and often subversive in intention toward the prevailing
structures.”*® Turner fundamentally considers the individual’s social dimen¬
sion, understood as communitas, to be a liminoid, voluntarist lifestyle.”
Richard Schechner, the theorist, director, and dramatist also mentioned by
Turner, uses the stages of infant development borrowed from Winnicott (I,
not-I, not not-I) with respect to the actor’s work (Turner evokes this border¬
crossing in his book). For the actor, the role, the character to be played, is the
not-I, and after he has integrated something of the character in himself, the
not-I transforms into an inner not-not-I. Turner assigns the director only a
catalytic role in this process that he describes variously as “alchemical” and
“mystical,” and he terms this third ego-condition as richer and deeper. Fur¬
thermore, in Richard Schechner’s practice — when he leaves the script open
to modification — the text also undergoes the same transitions. Quoting one
of Grotowski’s interviews, Turner determines that the image of the actor in
theaters of laboratory character is that of the active person who becomes not
a different person but himself, in order to be able to enter a connection with
another.°° Grotowski, for his part, calls an active culture one in which an ar¬
tisticteam or individuals do not perform, do not create theater but experience
existence (“acting is being, not performance”); and there are and have been
many of these worldwide. The rehearsal process is an important ground for
these experiences; Turner’s 1982 book cites the examples of Grotowski and
Schechner in particular among experimental theaters, in which vocal training,
psychodramas, dance, and certain elements of yoga play a major part, directed
toward the creation of communitas.”
In his Performance, Schechner emphasizes those productions which lead
not only from one state to another but also from one I-identity to the other
(“transformance’”).* It is real experience, and its results fundamentally charac¬
terize rite, whereas theater is basically characterized by recreation, and when
the two become tightly interwoven then theater begins to blossom and can
Victor Turner: From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play, New York, Performing
Arts Journal Publications, 1982, 118.
# Ibid.
30 Ibid., 117.
31 Ibid.
“All these disciplines and ordeals are aimed at generating communities or something like it
in the group.” Ibid., 119.
33 Richard Schechner: Performance Theory, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004, 136-137. (see the
chapter “Theater for Tourists”).