Midterm Study Sheet

For the exam, you will be asked to write three short essays. The essays questions will be chosen from among the following 17 questions – so study them all! You will not know in advance which questions will be on the exam.  In class, there will be one quick short answer test with 10 questions in addition to the essays. You should spend about 10-15 minutes on the single sheet short answer test and that will leave you about 20-25 minutes for each short essay. Exam books will be passed out for you to write in. You are allowed one 8x10 page with handwriting on one side only to accompany you to class. No computers or cell phones are allowed.  Bring a pen or pencil to class! The 2019 exam will be proctored by Courtney Lau.

1.  Give at least one reason why, according to Geertz, many Balinese men attend cockfights. Or, if you prefer, illuminate one important thing that occurs at a Balinese cockfight. Then, be able to expand the reason or important thing you choose into a brief explication of what you take to be Geertz’s major point about culture and performance in his essay “Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” from his book The Interpretation of Cultures.

2. Sir James Frazer hypothesized that “The battle between winter and summer is of primary importance in the development of primitive religion as well as of the theater […] over the whole world” (from Hunningher, The Origin of the Theater, 17-18). Frazer's Year God Hypothesis was adopted by the Cambridge anthropologists and employed in theories of how early theater grew out of a “Primal Ritual” to become tragedy (winter) and comedy (summer). Discuss at least one of the problems in focusing the origin of theater on a global “primal ritual” of a god dying and being reborn. Does Roy Rappaport’s notion of “ecological ritual” (used by Schechner) contrast with Frazer’s theory? What is “ecological ritual” and how does it compare or contrast to Frazer?

3. One theory concerning the prehistoric origins of ritual is that ritual grew up out of “sympathetic magic.” What is sympathetic magic? Select a play or a performance practice we have discussed so far this term and suggest the way in which it might effect an outcome. (Remember, this is not a question only about the outcome of a story told within the play, but a question about effect of the event.)

4. Drawing on any of the many scholars or artists or artist/scholars we have read so far in the semester, craft a small essay on the reasons people (or collectives of people) perform. Give at least three reasons and cite at least three of the scholars or artists we have read. 

5. Why does Wole Soyinka display so many varieties of mimetic behavior in his play Death and the King's Horseman? Pick at least three of the types of mimetic behavior he stages in the play and describe how their enactment on stage enables the theme of the play to develop.   

6: Why is “the body” such an important category for Connerton in How Societies Remember? What is the relationship between habit memory, or bodily memory, and memories that are inscribed or otherwise written down and available to the archive? Why is it important to try and distinguish between different types of memory? How or why might theatre be seen as betwixt and between written histories and bodily memories? 

7. Why is "ceremony" important for Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass? Write an essay that compares Kimmerer and Connerton's How Societies Remember.  What do you see as overlapping interests? What do you see as divergent method or divergent insights? Or, instead of Connerton use Geertz or any other text that we read for the semester as a point of comparison with Kimmerer.  

8.  Discuss at least three uses for masks as gathered from your reading of McCarty's essay. Thinking about Chief Robert Joseph’s text “Behind the Mask,” can we say that masks are always protective? Are there other uses McCarty doesn’t list that you might gather from our readings on shamanism or through thinking about the continuum of performance from acting like to becoming? In short, this is to ask you to craft a short essay on the uses of masks.

9.  Why does Leprohon have so much trouble with the question of whether or not Triumph of Horus can be considered theatre? Identify at least two stumbling blocks for him. Do you agree or disagree? That is, do you have any trouble identifying Triumph of Horus as theatre? If yes, say why. If no, say why. 

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10. What does Schechner mean when he writes: "Theatres everywhere are scenographic models of sociometric process"? Discuss some ways in which theatre as it developed in Greece might be called a scenographic model of sociometric process. Discuss at least two of the ways in which specific practices or architectures of enactment in ancient Greek theatre might be related to broader social processes. 

11.  Moderns, in whose world art, religion, humor and politics are largely separate activities, find it hard to grasp the different situation of a 5th-century Athens where such spheres were not so distinct. In ancient Greece, festival and state were inseparable in that they were included in one another. The connection between festival and state was fundamental to an emerging democracy -- where not only leaders but the gods themselves would come under the scrutiny of the people. Since the “right to speak freely” was a proud hallmark of Athenian democracy, can we see comedy and tragedy as a demonstration of that right? Can you take any one of the three Greek plays we read and discuss it as an example of “free speech”? Or, use a play to discuss both the emergence of free speech and the limits of free speech? For example, how can Thesmophoriazusae be seen as exercising the right to free speech, as discussed above? How can it, conversely, be seen as reinstating the status quo where the speech is free for only certain Athenians? In answering this, take into account not only the play, but the mode of production (such as the gender of the actors) in its time.

12.  In what ways do Plato and Aristotle agree? In what specific ways do they disagree?  With which argument do you most agree and why?  

13. The god Siva has eight aspects, enumerated at the start of Sakuntala. Following  the Barbara Stoller Miller reading, be able to discuss the role of shifting aspects in Sakuntala. Relate this question to the Indian concept of "maya" (illusion). How is theatre well-suited to a worldview that considers life an illusion?

14.  In your estimation, in Sakuntala, what is the antelope? Can it be said to be the audience (considering the first pages of the play)? If so, how might that be related to rasa? 

15.  Identify and analyze one difference between Kutiyattam and Kathakali that strikes you as important. Or, locate and identify the most striking difference between the practice of Kathakali and any tradition in which you have been trained. What strikes you as important about that difference (which is to ask: what difference do you imagine that difference would make in performance)?

16.  Discuss the place of the sensuous in The Bacchae relative to the place of the sensuous in Sakuntala. Is the general approach to “the body” and its pleasures differently articulated in these two plays? How? Give specific examples to support your argument. If you have time, can you relate this difference to Plato and Aristotle on the one hand and the Natyasastra on the other?

17.  Chose two uses of the body discussed by Eugenio Barba in Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (i.e., energy, balance, etc), and relate those particular uses to something you have learned about an Indian Theatre form.  


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