Engendering Community Through Performance and Play at the Euphoria and Scorched Nuts Regional Burns Bryan Schmidt
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 "Welcome Home!": Engendering Community Through Performance and Play at the Euphoria and Scorched Nuts Regional Burns Bryan Schmidt Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF VISUAL ARTS, THEATER & DANCE ―WELCOME HOME!‖: ENGENDERING COMMUNITY THROUGH PERFORMANCE AND PLAY AT THE EUPHORIA AND SCORCHED NUTS REGIONAL BURNS By BRYAN SCHMIDT A Thesis submitted to the School of Theater in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2012 Bryan Schmidt defended this thesis on April 25, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Elizabeth Osborne Professor Directing Thesis Mary Karen Dahl Committee Member Krzystof Salata Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii For my parents Susan and William, and my brother Kevin. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special Thanks to Beth Osborne for her tireless, crucial help and encouragement throughout the writing process, and for introducing me to the world of Burning Man; Mary Karen Dahl, for her insightful guidance especially during the planning stages of the project; Kris Salata, for serving on my committee, pointing me to fascinating theory, and engaging in lengthy discussions that helped me form my argument; Aaron C. Thomas, and George McConnell for each providing invaluable help during some of this project‘s most consternating moments; Natalya Baldyga for pointing me towards several texts that formed critical components of my research; Rebecca Ormiston, Susan Schmidt, and William Schmidt for help and support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ viii INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Background ..............................................................................................................................1 Review of Literature ................................................................................................................7 Methodology ..........................................................................................................................13 Chapter Outline .....................................................................................................................14 Beyond the Party ...................................................................................................................16 CHAPTER ONE: LIVED IN FESTIVALS AND THE FORMATION OF PLAY COMMUNITIES ...........................................................................................................................18 Defining a Lived-in Festival ..................................................................................................18 ―Emancipation‖ at a Lived-in Festival ..................................................................................24 Communitas in the Festival Setting .......................................................................................28 Conclusions: Political Possibilities ........................................................................................32 CHAPTER TWO: INDUCTING THE POPULACE: OFFICIAL ACTIVITIES AT SCORCHED NUTS AND EUPHORIA ..............................................................................................................35 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................35 Rules and Enforcement ..........................................................................................................37 Entry Procedures ...................................................................................................................40 The Effigy ..............................................................................................................................45 Fire in the Sky: The Conclave and Effigy Burning ...............................................................48 Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................51 CHAPTER THREE: FROM PEAK EXPERIENCE TO COMMUNITY EMERGENCE: UNOFFICIAL ACTIVITIES AT SCORCHED NUTS .................................................................53 Introduction ...........................................................................................................................53 Fire and Flow: Object Manipulation in Performance and Play .............................................55 The Storm at Scorched Nuts: Weather and Community .......................................................63 Community through Playful Exploration ..............................................................................67 v Conclusions ...........................................................................................................................69 CONCLUSIONS............................................................................................................................72 A Brief Note on Methodology ...............................................................................................72 Size Matters: Finding Community in the Very Small ...........................................................74 APPENDIX A: ―THE TEN PRINCIPLES OF BURNING MAN‖...............................................76 APPENDIX B: ―EUPHORIA‘S LIST OF TEN PRINCIPLES‖ ...................................................77 APPENDIX C: ―IRB LETTER OF APPROVAL‖ ........................................................................78 APPENDIX D: ―CONSENT FORM‖ ...........................................................................................80 APPENDIX E: ―PREHEAT/AFTERBURN QUESTIONNAIRE‖...............................................82 APPENDIX F: ―SCORCHED NUTS QUESTIONNAIRE‖ .........................................................83 APPENDIX G: ―EUPHORIA QUESTIONNAIRE‖ .....................................................................84 APPENDIX H: ―SUMMER CAMP MUSIC FESTIVAL QUESTIONNAIRE‖ ..........................85 APPENDIX I: ―PHOTO RELEASE FORM 1‖.............................................................................86 APPENDIX J: ―PHOTO RELEASE FORM 2‖ ............................................................................87 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ........................................................................................................ 93 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 The Burning Man Icon ..........................................................................................................20 2.1 Euphoria‘s Effigy ..................................................................................................................47 3.1 A Participant in the Middle of a Fire Spinning Routine at Scorched Nuts ...........................56 3.2 An Intensely Focused Fire Spinner at Euphoria ...................................................................59 vii ABSTRACT This thesis explores two regional offshoots of the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada (Burns)—Ohio‘s Scorched Nuts and Georgia‘s Euphoria—by examining how, through performance and play activities in these temporary festival settings, participants may form with one another deep, communal relationships evocative of Victor Turner‘s concept of communitas. Combining theoretical reading, field research, and participant interviews, it discusses the political potential of these relationships as well as the way that participant theatricality and festival dramaturgies contribute to their construction. The thesis begins by considering general effects that attending a festival in which people must remain inside the premises over a series of days (a ―lived-in‖ festival) might have on participants‘ ability to engage with others in intimate, intersubjective encounters. It then outlines the ―official activities‖ of Euphoria and Scorched Nuts—those activities orchestrated by event organizers and which involve all or essentially all who enter the grounds—and shows how these activities create distinct overarching dramaturgies for each festival that establish commonalities between participants and energize them to socialize with one another. Finally, it examines case studies of Scorched Nuts‘ unofficial activities—those orchestrated by participants, rather than organizers, and generally involving only a few people at a time—proposing that these activities are the primary sites where communitas arises in a festival setting. viii INTRODUCTION Background On the last evening I spent at Euphoria, a festival held in June of 2011 on a wooded tract of land called Cherokee Farms, I awoke in the middle of the night to flashes of multi-colored neon lights and bursts of orange flames outside my tent. Hearing sporadic cheers, almost inaudible over the plangent