As our country emerges from a global health crisis that has left people feeling isolated and uncared, it is deeply divided and steeped in a variety of political and social conflicts. In our secular capitalist America, strangers who are not already part of a shared community, such as a church or a school, have no tangible way to experience the togetherness communitas provides. This thesis is interested in how theater can provide this opportunity by moving from a commodity into a vehicle for communitas. In order to do so, this paper investigates three religious ritual performances – Ta'ziyeh, Purimspiel, and the Dionysus Festival – in order to understand how these past practices point the way towards cultivating communitas today. Through this exploration alongside an understanding of Victor Turner and performance theorist Richard Schechner's writing of theater and ritual, this thesis provides a 4-part metric outlining the aspects contemporary theater must adopt in order to function as secular ritual. This metric is then applied to two contemporary theater pieces, What to Send up When it Goes Down by Aleshea Harris, and The Nosebleed by Aya Ogawa. Here we discover that both plays effectively achieve communitas by deviating from the normative structures of theater that keep audiences as passive consumers. Ultimately this paper argues that in order for theater to achieve its potential in our American society, as a vehicle for communitas it must measure its success by whether or not it functions as secular ritual.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Theater","Ritual","Community"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33867