Midterm Exam Study Sheet

For the exam, you will be asked to write three short essays. The essays questions will be chosen from among the following questions – so study them all!  In class, there will be one quick short answer test with about 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 but please bring your own pen or pencil. You are allowed one 8x10 page with writing on one side only to accompany you to class. No computers or cell phones are allowed. The exam will be proctored by the Teaching Assistant. 

QUESTION: 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.

QUESTION: 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?

QUESTION: Building on the notion of ecological ritual, Schechner claims that “theatres everywhere are scenographic models of sociometric process”? What does this mean? Chose an example from material we have studied to date to help explain this concept

QUESTION: 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.)

QUESTION: Drawing on any of the many scholars or artists are 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.

QUESTION: 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 the play to develop.  

QUESTION: Why is “the body” such an important category for Paul Connerton in his discussion of 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 official written histories and unofficial bodily memories?

 

YOU'RE HALFWAY THROUGH, TAKE A BREAK: 

QUESTION:  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 as if to becoming? This is to ask you to craft a short essay on the uses of mask.

QUESTION: 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. 

QUESTION:  How can The Triumph of Horus be seen to be "chiasmatic" and in what way might chiasm be related to hieroglyphic writing as discussed in the lecture by Kenneth Molloy? 

QUESTION: 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.

QUESTION:  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 Thesmaphorizusae 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.

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

QUESTION:  Can the idea of a mask, or a surrogate object, be related to Marx’s idea of the commodity fetish? How does Wickstrom draw on Marx’s idea of the fetishism of the commodity in her essay on The Lion King?  Do you agree with her argument? Or, if you prefer, use Geertz to answer this question rather than Wickstrom.  Is there a way in which one can read the cock’s in the cockfights described by Geertz as “standing in for relations among men,” as Marx reads of the commodity fetish? Basically this question is an invitation to craft a short essay on objects or animals that stand in for social relations among humans and to relate those operations of surrogacy to Marx’s comment on commodity fetishism.

 
If you have done all the reading and participated in class discussion (paying attention at the very least) throughout the semester you will do fine on the exam. All materials will be taken either from readings, lectures, or class discussions.  Have FUN!!!