Drama Ritual

Drama ritualsChristhalia Wiloto

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Introduction

The main focus of this drama unit was to understand what rituals are, how they work, and its importance to drama. To achieve a better understanding of the art of rituals, we were assigned to come up with our own original ritual which we performed in front of an audience.

The ritual that my group came up with for this assignment was called Bamboomsha. Bamboomsha is a ritual where the people of the fictional bamboo village are praising their village chief and gods for the year’s great harvest. Aside from praises, this ritual also consisted of celebration activities such as playing games and being thankful for water.


Group Effectiveness

As we worked as a group to accomplish this assignment, it would be a lie if I were to say that we worked together perfectly and didn’t come across a single difficulty. We came across quite a few disagreements, but at the end we were able to solve these issues and successfully accomplish the task. Although some group members showed more effort than others, we all contributed to make this performance a success.


Drama SkillsAs we were trying to come up with the different actions for our ritual, we thought about the different skills that we learnt in class. We decided to influence our ritual with skills that we learnt such as movement, choral speaking and we also used symbolic objects.

Each event in our ritual has movement such as walking around in circles and doing a few sets of rhythmic clapping. We also always had choral speaking in every single event. Symbolic objects, such as the water, the vase, and the bamboos, were also used in all of our events.


Events of Our Ritual

1. Praising the Village Chiefs

2. Praising the Gods

3. Water Dance

4. Singing and Playing Games

5. An Act of Unity


Meaning behind each event

The first event of the ritual, which was a praise for the village chiefs, was a mixture of dance and choral speaking. It was performed to thank the village chiefs for their hard work and to show gratitude because they led us to a successful bamboo harvest. The second event was performed to thank the gods for their generosity of making the bamboo harvest a success. The third event was a mixture of dance and choral speaking. It was a dance that we performed to show how thankful we were for the year’s rain and how grateful we were for water. Since this ritual was a celebration, the next event was a game that involved choral speaking, The villagers chanted as they played a game and the village chiefs cheered them on. The last event was just a quick act of unity, symbolizing the union of all the people of the bamboo village.


Emotions HarvestedUnfortunately, I was disappointed with the emotion that I felt as I watched a replay of our ritual. When I imagined the performance it my head, I was hoping that it would seem unified and strong. Just the opposite, the actual performance looked like we were lazy and didn’t put any effort, even though we worked really hard to create and perform this ritual.

ChangesIf I was able to redo this assignment, then I would change a lot of things. Firstly, I would make sure that the group gets some practice on the choral speaking. I would also make sure that the group practices how they step out of and enter each events. That way, the ritual wouldn’t seem messy.


Difference between Plays and rituals

Through this assignment, I have found out that there are many differences between plays and rituals. I think that the biggest difference would be the fact that rituals have a much deeper meaning than plays. Rituals are also usually performed exactly the same way whereas plays are usually improvised and changed depending on the different directors.


Drama Ritual

Documents

Transcript of Drama Ritual