Creating Ritual Theatre

When art and spirit combine

As I write this, I am sitting on the couch of a gorgeous, glamorous Airbnb. From the basement, an aria wafts up: a professional tenor practicing Italian opera. From upstairs, the playful groan of an accordion player composing a score. Actors practice their lines in the vestibule, while in at the kitchen table, the production manager edits endless spreadsheets. We are preparing for an immersive performance at one of Chicago’s eminent theatres.

It’s all a far cry from last weekend, when I helped with a merry Easter chase of teams through the woods to find eggs, battle characters, and feast at a giant table of brisket and impeccably decorated cakes (I decorated them, in case you’re wondering 😜).

Yet, both these performances shared a common theme: Ritual.

“Ritual theatre” is a new concept in my world - yet one that is quickly invading every weekend.

Last weekend’s “Bloody Easter” event

In ritual theatre, there are no bystanders. You are initiated; you are guided; you are immersed. You transition from your usual self to a less individual, less personal one, often with the medium of masks or a change of clothes. You participate in the sorts of rites performed throughout history: song, dance, poetry, repetitive elemental actions such as the washing of feet or creation of a fire.

To quote one website,

“Ritual theater is intentionally different from what we may call “traditional” theater…Catharsis is the central experience (for audience and performers), the methods tend to be psycho-spiritual with the spiritual played in and through the performers rather than directed up toward a transcendent god, and the audience members are participants rather than passive spectators.”

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines ritual as “a set of actions or words performed in a regular way, often as part of a religious ceremony”. A definition I like more, from anthropologist Frank Robert Vivelo, is: “broadly…any prescribed, stylized stereotypical way of performing some act. Narrowly, a single act of a religious performance”.

I find the term “ritual” to be interesting. In the same way that the term “spiritual” has morphed from its original connotation of “a life oriented towards the Holy Spirit” to (as far as I can tell) any connection with something larger than oneself, rituals seem to have morphed from its own original definition. In a way, both of them now rely on Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous declaration about pornography: “I know it when I see it”.

Our rituals are no longer based in repetition or regularity. Nor are they always based in religion. Like spirituality, they seem to have become about their products as much as the process: the feeling of connection to something older, something greater than ourselves.

Modern ritual theatre, outside the church, is rarely about practicing religious ceremony or repeating actions. As far as I can tell, it is about the evocation of emotion and transcendence of self through stylized, metaphorical, and participatory performance.

Image source: Academy of Oracle Arts

In traditional theatre, you should leave entertained.

In ritual theatre, you should leave changed.

I am tempted to make this a research paper on ritual theatre - in fact, I want to use this article as an excuse to go check out all the books and courses I can on the topic, as it fascinates me - but perhaps that will be a later article. Here, I want to take you into the world of ritual theatre as I’ve experienced it these past few weeks. I want to show you the magic, the chaos, and the glory of being both participant and producer of transformative experience.

From the halls of New York’s immersive “Life and Trust” set by the producers of Sleep No More, to my own property’s annual hundred-person Bloody Easter festivities, to a journey of kink, sex, ordeals, and Divine Comedy in Chicago’s Theatre Y (and other locales)…let me take you on the journey of my own last two months.

Deep breath -