Mani-Rimdu: Sherpa Dance-Drama by Luther G. Jerstad (review)

452 MODERN DRAMA February ment, the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry in this country entirely geared to making women look younger than they really are, or notice the television co~· mercials proudly showing how difficult it is to tell mother from daughter, we can realize that Martha is a product of her time, caught up in her society's need· to worship youth." We thus learn that Martha is like many millions of other women, but we are left to make what we can of the unique Martha on the stage in the unique world of the play. What a pity that Rutenberg did not pay greater heed to Albee's advice, in one of the two interviews appended to the book: "I think it's about time that audiences and critics ... get rid of this whole notion of the conscious symbolism in realistic or symbolic plays and begin to understand that the use of the unconscious in the 20th Century theatre is its most interesting development ." And: "People will read signposts into anything because they seem unwilling to suffer an experience on its own terms and let their unconscious come into full play.... This pigeon-holing and symbol-hunting is merely an attempt not to suffer the experience the playwright wants the audience to suffer:' Rutenberg does have another side, and a very positive side, however: a grasp of the plays in the quite practical terms of theatrical production. This side is apparent in various places, especially in his interesting chapter on Albee's adaptations . And he is very good-and at his liveliest and most provocative-in his chapter on Box-Mao-Box. There the new politics leads to the new theater, for which he pleads in an argument based on Marshall McLuhan and on Leon Festinger's A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. The argument is well presented, and it could serve as a critical introduction not only to this play but to a whole genre. In the interviews Albee is sometimes sardonic and disingenuous but offers valuable statements of his conscious attitudes and intentions. Each of these studies closes with a "Selected Bibliography" (Rutenberg's with several mysterious entries simply of names, of newspapers and periodicals, such as "Newsday" and "Newsweek"). WILUAM WILLEFORD University of Washington MANI-RIMDU: SHERPA DANCE-DRAMA, Luther G. Jerstad, University of Washington Press, xvi-192 pp, 1969. $6.95. This study of one form of Nepalese dance-drama has considerable interest for anyone speculating on the basic principles of the performing arts with confidence that such thinking has value for stage practices today. The book provides a scholarly, straightforward account of the chief dramatic festivals in this relatively unfamiliar section of the globe. Much is said pertinent to current thought on dramatic principles and practice. Moreover, the book is timely in other respects as well . Inasmuch as the primitive type of theater which it describes is in imminent danger of disappearing altogether, all eye-witness reports by Westerners or by Indian scholars themselves acquainted with currents in modem criticism are potentially valuable. The book is singularly lucid and unpedantic. It is of note that the author was a member of the American Mount Everest Expedition in 1963. As a writer, also, he makes few, if any, false steps. Although clearly his dedication to his subject derives more from his observations as a sociologist than from a concern with specialized studies in theories of drama, his orientation may in the end be a gain. _ He ·offers stimulating comments of value to men of the theater and leaves virtually no traces of the aridity into which abstractions in this area too often descend. 1971 BOOK REVIEWS 453 He examines primitive drama at the same time that he breathes the fresh air to which Himalayan mountaineers are accustomed. His explorations in this most stony area of the globe are distinctly fruitful. On the one hand, there are no barren or tedious attempts to overrefine definitions of such terms as drama, ritual, ceremony, or dance. On the other hand, much that is eminently cogent is said on their interrelations. At the root of his study is an analysis of the place of meaning in art...