Anthropology and Theatre

Anthropology and Theatre Jules Aaron You look at ideals. I teach in a wonderful private school for really privileged, bright kids. They've been to Europe, they've seen Star Wars three times, and they have Spanish speaking maids. Yet not a singleone of my students knew the name of the Chairman of the Republic of China. Almost eight hundred million people, a quarter of the world's people, and these kids had no idea who ran China. And I said to them, "What's wrong with you kids? You're so bright; you're so privileged. You have all these advantages. Don't you want to know about these things? Don't they interest you? It's so isolated." And this little seventh grader stood up, and he said: "Ken, it's not our fault that we don't know the name of the Chairman of the Republic of China. It's the Chinese's fault. They got bad p.r." And I thought to myself-Los Angeles, 1978, and that's what it's about-bad p.r. That's where it is. My interest at the Taper is trying to find ways, both personally and through working with Gordon and my colleagues here of re-defining, rethinking theatre. It has to reach people. People need to be opened up to new influences. If you've been to hear Andy Young preach on a Sunday morning in a Black Baptist church, you know it's great theatre-and by exactly the same criteria that you should judge a play. If you march with a dragon, if you're inside that dragon on New Year's Eve in Chinatown, you know the power of theatre. You know what it is, as you say, largerthan -life: bringing together myth and emotion, and defining ourselves. We need a kind of continuity with the magical world. We need a continuity with the pragmatic world as well. -Ken Brecher At the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, anthropologist/ director Ken Brecher has been Director for New Programs since June 1977. Brecher is a graduate of Cornell University, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and the first non-Indian to live among the Wausha tribesmen of the Brazilian Amazon. In 1970, he created a .series for the BBC, "They'd Never Believe Me," where Amazonian Indians commented on British culture. And in 1974, he staged the Indian sequences for Christopher Hampton's Savages, directed by Gordon Davidson at the Forum. Currently, Brecher has directed The Winter Dancers at the Forum, a play by David Lan, also an anthropologist. Lan was born in Capetown, South Africa, and has a degree from the London School of Economics. Winter Dancers examines the making of a shaman in the Kwakiutl Indian tribe of Vancouver Island at the 100 -e THE WINTER DANCERS turn-of-the-century. Through a combination of personal and ritualistic conflict, the play investigates the need for magic among a tribe whose stable culture is being invaded by an outside force, the white man, who will eventually overwhelm the Indians. The play is a series of interlocking rituals about the rite of magic. The action unfolds on Ralph Funicello's powerful set with a central wooden area surrounded by a U-shaped walk, all dwarfed by monolithic columns and backed by overhead projected scenes of the breathtaking Vancouver terrain. In the play, Lan juxtaposes the doubts of the growing shaman, Carver, against the encouragement of his wife and the "exploitation" of the up-coming Chief, Fool. Carver learns the artifice of his trade and the responsibility; he must face the paradox that the Indians who are cured by him know his "tricks" yet still believe-and need to believe. Winter Dancerssets this paradox within the interpersonal rituals in Carver's life: the ritual of becoming a shaman in the tribe, the larger ritual of the usurpation of the Indians by the white man, and the presentation ritual of performing this play in a theatre. The work is highly theatrical as both ritual and theatre, and it is clearly the work of two anthropologists. In answer to a question from Taper Literary Manager, David Copelin, as to...