Duro Ladipo: Thunder-God on Stage

Books

Duro Ladipo: Thunder-God on Stage. By Remi Raji-Oyelade, Sola Olorunyomi, and Abiodun Duro-Ladipo. 2nd edition. Ibadan: IAS (Institute of African Studies), University of Ibadan & IFAnet Editions, 2008 (2003); 207 pp. Nigerian Naira 1200 paper. Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o’s Drama and the Kamı˜rı˜ı˜thu˜ Popular Theater Experiment. By Gïchingiri Ndïgïrïgï. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007; 308 pp. $29.95 paper. If you are based in the Northern hemisphere and looking for English- language works on African theatre and the performing arts, choices are limited, but not dismal. First, you might examine what Africana publishers with a good humanities program have to offer: James Currey, for example, Bayreuth African Studies Series (BASS), or Africa World Press. Then you might consult academic publishers with African studies and/or theatre series: Indiana University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, or Rodopi, to name but a few. If you are interested in African theatre scholarship published on the African continent, however, material is much harder to come by. The most obvious source to consult is the African Books Collective (ABC), a UK-based nonprofit marketing and distribution outlet owned by a group of African publishers. Yet despite covering some 119 publishing houses in 19 African countries, their drama and theatre section is extremely small. In June 2008, ABC only featured three full-length studies in their catalogue—a drama handbook and two single-author studies, all of them published in or prior to 2002. I am not trying to say that there is little contemporary theatre scholarship in Africa. Last year’s IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research) conference on “Theatre in Africa—Africa in the Theatre” in Stellenbosch, South Africa, is proof of the contrary, with roughly a quarter of the 300 participants coming from longstanding African theatre departments, such as those at the University of Ibadan, the University of Dar es Salaam, and the University of Botswana. The statistical makeup, however, is quite indicative of the resources available to local theatre scholars. Often, the dissemination of their work is hampered by lack of funding and/or affordable publishing outlets, and a dearth of wider-than-local distribution channels. Publishers often demand printing costs upfront—hardly affordable for your average theatre person—while distribution beyond the national academic market is habitually difficult. Much of the theatre material generated by colleagues in Africa thus never makes it into print; and that which does, often does not make it beyond the local campus library or the author’s immediate circle of colleagues and friends. The first book under review here, a sourcebook on the Nigerian theatre artist Duro Ladipo, thus came to me by chance rather than choice—hand-delivered by a Nigerian colleague attending a conference in Europe. It is often these personal contacts that keep knowledge about theatre scholarship in Africa alive, via former or ongoing research collaborations, alumni networks, and conference contacts. It goes without saying that such links remain selective. And to bring the story to full circle, many Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 academics at African universities face similar problems. Often they cannot get hold of theatre books published abroad, partly because of the cost, partly because marketing, payment, and delivery arrangements leave much to be desired. This somewhat haphazard movement of people, performance, and knowledge between the South and the North is also reflected in the lives of the two artists under discussion. The late Duro Ladipo—performer, musician, dramatist, and director with a permanent base in Oshogbo, Nigeria—frequently toured the world, spreading the word about his highly acclaimed Yoruba “folk opera”; Ngügï wa Thiong’o, Kenyan novelist, playwright, scholar, and essayist, was forced into exile in the US after his involvement in a local, highly politicized community theatre project, and has been operating from there ever since. Both artists have been very influential as theatre practitioners; both were “popular” in Africa, though in different senses; and both produced plays in African languages. Their work nonetheless differs in many respects, as do the approaches to the study of their dramatic heritage. Thirty years after Ladipo’s death, Remi Raji-Oyelade, Sola Olorunyomi, and Abiodun Duro- Ladipo have brought out the second edition of a sourcebook on the artist’s life and craft. Much of the material gathered here is based on the private collection of Abiodun Duro-Ladipo, one of Lapido’s wives and most closely involved in the Duro Ladipo Theatre. She collected letters, newspaper clippings, notes, and pictures beginning in the early 1960s. The book is primarily an “homage to an enduring tradition of a spectacular variety of African theatre” (vii); it also aims at revising “certain unresolved information on the man” (vii) and artist. What this “unresolved information” might be remains a little elusive, yet the authors certainly succeed in paying tribute to one of the most innovative and formative theatre artists in modern Nigeria. Divided into books 1 and 2, the volume takes us progressively through Ladipo’s life. Book 1 comprises two chronological accounts of his “dramatic beginnings” and the company’s tours respectively (including Ladipo’s premature, and somewhat fabled, passing); a longer interview with Abiodun Duro-Ladipo; snippets from conversations with friends, mentors, and critics; and an evaluation of Ladipo’s contribution to Nigerian theatre by University of Ibadan Professor Philip Adedotun Ogundeji. This is followed by various appendices that reproduce song texts, contracts, reviews, “palavas” (gossip) (77), and letters, mostly in English, some also in Yoruba. Book 2 consists entirely of photographs from Abiodun Duro-Ladipo’s private collection. The material is a real treasure trove of unpublished pictorial insights into Ladipo’s craft at home and abroad—the troupe in their early stage, at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, in New York, Brazil, and at the height of their fame in Nigeria—even if the quality of the reproductions is somewhat lacking. Unfortunately, this section is not paginated, with the final index only covering Book 1. This is regrettable since many pictures relate to events narrated or referred to in the previous part, and it is thus left to readers to match text and relevant illustrations. The picture material also suggests that the book is as much about Abiodun Duro-Ladipo as it is about her late husband. Widely known by her stage name Oya, “the river-goddess, wife to King Sango, god of thunder and light[n]ing” (9) in Ladipo’s most famous play Oba Ko So (The King Did Not Hang; 1963), Abiodun Duro-Ladipo features strongly in the book, both visually and as a narrative voice. Little is said about Ladipo’s other wives and their contribution to the company, or about other artists. On the whole the focus is on Ladipo’s biography and the company’s tours, not on the performative or metaphysical aspects of their theatre. Readers interested in the connection of form and meaning in Ladipo’s plays are better advised to consult Olu Obafemi’s Contemporary Nigerian Theatre (1996) instead. All in all, little of the material covered in this volume can be considered “critical”; most of it is descriptive in nature, often with a hagiographic slant. At times I wished for more scholarly rigor with regard to incomplete (or incorrect) bibliographical references, citations, or the spelling of names. A serious mix-up of sources can be observed among the reviews culled from various US newspapers in 1975 about Ladipo’s last overseas tour. Previously published in Abiodun Ladipo’s I Only Wanted to Help Him (1988)—in much better order—the layout of Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 bibliographical references up until page 88/89 makes it seem as if the reference (the newspaper in which it is published and the date) belongs with the preceding review rather than the one that immediately follows. For the researcher trying to trace the original publications, this is bound to cause problems. It would have also helped to identify more fully those commenting on the artist, and to list the date, place, and recording methods of the interviews. Nonetheless, the book has a lot to offer students of African theatre. Most valuable are the previously unpublished documents and pictures from Duro-Ladipo’s private archive. I also enjoyed reading the comments by Ladipo’s mentors, critics, and friends. Fruitful for further research will be the contra- dictions and tensions emerging from these texts, and how they relate to earlier studies, such as Duro Ladipo Theatre member Ademola Onibonokuta’s personal account, The Return of Shango (1983), and other publications from the Duro Ladipo Memorial Series edited by Ulli Beier. The authors can certainly be commended for unearthing and making available these resources on one of Nigeria’s most formative artists. Thunder-God on Stage is a timely reminder of the greatness of Ladipo’s work on the 30th anniversary of his demise. It is to be hoped that this new material will rekindle interest in further studies, not only in historical reconstructions of the where’s and when’s, but also in performance-based analyses of his productions. It is this focus on the sociological and historical dimension, rather than an evaluation of its aesthetic aspects, that Gïchingiri Ndïgïrïgï criticizes most strongly in the reception of Ngügï wa Thiong’o’s theatre work to date. Until recently, Ngügï’s dramatic oeuvre has been neglected in African literature circles, emphasis being placed on his prose and essayistic writings, while theatre scholars have often concentrated on the radical activist spirit of the Kamïrïïthü experience. Ndïgïrïgï aims to “deviate” from this approach by “discussing Ngügï’s drama as a continuum” (1), while at the same time scrutinizing the social and artistic features of Kamïrïïthü. Framed by an introduction, a conclusion, and various appendices with mostly historical background, Ndïgïrïgï’s study takes us from Ngügï’s early dramatic works—written during his student days and characterized by a string of “messianic heroes” (13)—to his reinvention of Kenya in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) before concentrating on Ngügï’s Gïküyü-language projects, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want; performed in 1977, English transla- tion published in 1982) and Maitü Njugïra (Mother, Sing For Me; 1982). The final chapters provide a reassessment of the Kamïrïïthü Popular Theater Experiment and an overview of “Kenyan Theater after Kamïrïïthü” respectively, and are partly based on the author’s field research. Ndïgïrïgï thus attempts to combine close textual reading and performance analysis with a reevaluation of Ngügï’s most widely recognized theatre project. Ngügï, so the gist of the argument goes, came closer to his intended audience of “peasants and workers” with his Gïküyü-language plays, but they proved to be less “community-generated” and less “efficacious” (199) as a counterhegemonic discourse to neoimperialist forces than generally believed. While recognizing Kamïrïïthü as a landmark of Kenyan theatre, Ndïgïrïgï dissects the project over a period of almost 20 years, in the attempt to “de-fetishize” events and put things into more realistic perspective. Such a reevaluation is appropriate and long overdue, yet Ndïgïrïgï’s study is not genuinely convincing. For one, his conceptual frame is compromised by his ambivalent stance towards “high theory” (10) and “trendy” terms (more prone to “guarantee a scholar tenure” [10]) as against, one might guess, the nitty-gritty labor of down-to-earth field research. While there is certainly a grain of truth in this divide, Ndïgïrïgï wants to have it both ways, it seems; on the one hand rejecting highfalutin concepts, and on the other hand constantly inserting references to postcolonial and other theories, many en vogue in the 1990s when large parts of this book were written. At times, these theoretical interludes feel forced and do little to add to our ap- preciation of the subject matter under discussion. I also have quibbles with his take on certain generic aspects of theatre, such as his dichotomous reading of “literary” versus “social protest” theatre (which, to the author, is the same as “popular” [133]), and his truncated rendering of Theatre for Development (134ff), which does not take into account more contemporary (and Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 community-friendly) methods, local varieties of which are later discussed in the post-Kamïrïïthü overview. The final chapter is by far the most interesting—and readable—section of this book; not only due to the stringency of the writing, but also because it does indeed give a good overview of more recent theatrical developments in Kenya up to the late 1990s. Previously published as an article in TDR (Ndïgïrïgï 1999), it shows signs of editorship which some of the other chapters are lacking. There are many moments in the book where Ndïgïrïgï’s argument could have been rearranged and organized into a tighter structure, and time after time I wished he had cut down on extensive endnotes and overlong quotes in the text. This is particularly prevalent in his lengthy literature overview on the Kamïrïïthü project (even if a bibliographic resource in itself). With time, Ndïgïrïgï’s tone gets increasingly indignant and, even in instances where criticism seems appropriate, his self-righteous tone and occasionally scathing sarcasm begin to irritate. Behind the scholarly discussion, there appears to be a subtext lying in wait that has little to do with Ngügï’s theatre projects, but with Ndïgïrïgï’s own standing in the profession, be it among theatre practitioners or fellow academics who seem to have failed to acknowledge him. While Ndïgïrïgï cannot quite realize his own ambitions, though instigating an interesting new impulse in the Ngügï debate, the study on Ladipo remains refreshingly “untheoretical” and is content with celebrating the artist’s achievements. Both books will make useful additions to library collections on African theatre, be they located South or North, and both prove the necessity of further (re)appraisal of the many performing arts talents on the African continent.

—Christine Matzke References Ladipo, Abiodun. 1988. I Only Wanted to Help Him. Bayreuth: Iwalewa-Haus. Ndïgïrïgï, Gïchingiri. 1999. “Kenyan Theatre after Kamïrïïthü.” TDR 43, 2 (T162):72–93. Obafemi, Olu. 1996. Contemporary Nigerian Theatre: Cultural Heritage and Social Vision. Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger, Bayreuth University. Onibonokuta, Ademola. 1983. The Return of Shango: In Memory of the Duro Ladipo Theatre. Bayreuth: Iwalewa-Haus.

Christine Matzke teaches literature and theatre in the Department of African Studies, Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin. She specializes in Eritrean theatre and is currently co-guest editing the next volume of the African Theatre series published by James Currey Ltd.

Judson Dance Theatre: Performative Traces. By Ramsay Burt. New York: Routledge, 2006; 201 pp.; illustrations. $96.00 cloth, $33.00 paper.

The photo on the cover of Ramsay Burt’s Judson Dance Theatre: Performative Traces shows Mikhail Baryshnikov performing Flat, Steve Paxton’s iconic 1964 solo. Baryshnikov sits on the stage floor, naked except for boxers, his jacket and trousers hanging off tiny hooks taped to his bare torso as if he were his own valet. It’s a dramatic, arresting, historic...and wrong...image. This Kirov-trained danseur’s gesture seems too theatrical for the raw minimalism of the Judson Dance Theatre ethos. Instead, it has the expansive emotional Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 reach of Albrecht swearing allegiance to Giselle—and Baryshnikov’s fashionable eyeglasses suggest that his is a body with a consciousness of seduction, his dance driven by an intelligence and pleasure in the audience-pleasing aesthetic, and not just the functional aspects, of the movement he is performing. But as a signifier forEuropean postmodern dance—this image just might work. It is this tension between American postmodern dance as exemplified by the signature works of the Judson Dance Theatre—like Paxton’s Flat—and the performative traces of this work in European modern dance that is the focus of Burt’s newest book, Judson Dance Theatre: Performative Traces. Burt, a Professor of Dance History at De Montfort University and one of the leading dance studies scholars in the UK, has in recent years steadily chipped away at several canonical beliefs about 20th-century dance. Now his new book on Judson extends this focus into the 1960s and 1970s crisscrossing from the US to Western Europe and challenging the divides between artists on the two continents. In his previous dance studies scholarship, Burt has championed a wide array of theorists and methodologies—some imported from cultural and film studies—as a means of understanding choreography. In this new book, Burt challenges existing scholarship on the dances produced by the Judson choreographers, weaving a theoretical matrix around Michael Fried’s often-cited “Art and Objecthood” (1968) and its acknowledgement of the demands Minimalist work makes on the spectator to take time to see a work and recognize its presence. Burt offers a revisionist story of the influence of the Judson works and artists, arguing that German contemporary dance of the 1970s was as radical and experimental as that at Judson Dance Theatre in the 1960s, and that the privileging by American critics of Clement Greenberg’s ideas about pure formal art created a barrier to their seeing this link between European and American dance of the past 40 years (7). In his search for similarities between the loose band of choreographers performing at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and European dance theatre artists, especially Pina Bausch, Burt turns to improvisation. Arguing that Bausch’s infamous psychological probing of her dancers is another form of improvisation, he notes how it works on the spectator in ways similar to the affect of the Minimalist object on viewers, by making the spectator “actively read works” while being highly aware of the performer’s “bodily intelligence” (14). In an effort to tidy up his insights, Burt at times streamlines the narrative possibilities of the dances and artists he considers. For example, while accurately asserting that improvisation was especially valuable for Simone Forti and Trisha Brown, he says that this is because they had less technical training to react against than most of their colleagues. Both women, in fact, had substantial movement training in modern dance technique, as well as improvisation, and they elected improvisation as an aesthetic rather than a pragmatic choice. While Burt notes that Bausch also began using improvisation in the 1970s, in fact her subsequent use of it played out very differently as she more consciously highlighted the autobiographical qualities of the movement material that emerged, stripping away social veneers while heightening theatricality (14). Judson Dance Theatre: Performative Traces commences boldly with a promise to redress what Burt sees as essentially the American-centric scholarship on Judson, the de facto center of New York dance experimentation in the 1960s. Challenging Sally Banes’s pioneering work on the Judson Dance Theatre and postmodern dance (Banes 1980 and 1983), Burt uses Banes’s criteria for postmodernism to argue that Bausch was postmodern rather than expressionistic and that her dances were as radical and experimental as those of the Judson choreographers. These are increasingly useful arguments, as other new dance studies scholarship is proving since Susan Manning made the beginnings of a related argument in TDR in 1986. Banes’s scholarship was originally published in 1980 and 1983, with a revised edition of the 1980 Terpsichore in Sneakers issued in 1987, making the bulk of Banes’s writing on Judson now more than 25 years old. It maps an art movement and body of work that has been the subject of considerable new analysis and historiography in the past decade. (Banes’s academic career ended abruptly in 2002 after she suffered a massive stroke and lost the capacity to revise or defend her initial arguments.) Burt Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 overstates Banes’s approach and methodology, framing her view of postmodern dance as being fundamentally internally motivated and “independent of any social or historical context” (8), when in fact she was the first dance historian of this period tobegin to contextualize Judson in the political and social movements of the 1960s. In a shrewd move, Burt critically reads Don McDonagh’s problematic anthology, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance (1970), as a primary text for Robert Dunn’s Judson workshop. Yet as with his comments about Banes not being political, Burt also seems curiously determined to represent the relationship between avantgarde art and social and political events during the 1960s as apolitical. Burt writes, “Rainer and her fellow dancers had grown up in the US during the cold war and consequently none of them has ever been happy with the idea that their work might be political” (17). While they were not nationalistic, which is what I think Burt intends to say, many of them, Rainer foremost among them, certainly made work that was highly political— in regard to relating one’s views about social relationships involving authority or power. Burt’s push to frame the dance of the Judson era as apolitical extends to his observations about the leading dance critic of the time, Jill Johnston of The Village Voice, whom he describes thus: “Jill Johnston in the 1960s was not a politicized dance writer, and I have not found any reviews she wrote during this time that dealt with either dance by African American artists or of dance used in a context of political protest” (120). I found this assertion surprising in regard to my memory of Johnston’s reviews and so I randomly opened the original 1971 edition of her collected criticism from 1960 to 1970, Marmalade Me (neither it nor the expanded edition reissued in 1998 is indexed), and immediately found a review about the African American dancer Gus Solomons (221), as well as several reviews of dance performances that discussed their im- plicit and explicit connections to political protest. Certain of Burt’s errors may be the function of not having seen first hand some of these artists about whom he writes. Burt’s comments about Meredith Monk are particularly uncomfortable in this respect, as he describes her performance in 16 Millimeter Earrings as putting on “clown-like crossed eyes” and “self-conscious ironizing by going crossed-eyed when pulling her hair in a strange way” (123, 125). Anyone who has seen Monk perform live, or watched films of her, knows she has crossed-eyes, a fact she has never masked in her performances, nor has she ever “clowned” or “ironized” about it. Burt argues that innovative dance artists on both sides of the Atlantic have more in common with one another than most existing dance literature to date suggests. He cites the by now leg- endary antipathy of American critics to Pina Bausch’s American debut at the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles as being misguided and ignorant of the deeper aesthetic similarities between Bausch and Brown and her fellow American Judson choreographers. This is a discussion Ann Daly began in an article on Tanztheater published in TDR in 1986, when she tried to untangle the sharply negative reactions to Bausch’s US debut by American dance critics through a formal analysis of perceptual limitations of both nations’ dance writers. In the two decades since this appeared, the politics of reception in the international dance world has changed con- siderably, with European audiences and critics having evolved into highly sophisticated consum- ers, restagers, and scholars of American postmodern dance—Burt foremost among them. —Janice Ross References Banes, Sally. 1980. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post Modern Dance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Banes, Sally. 1983. Democracy’s Body: Judson Dance Theatre, 1962–1964. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press. Daly, Ann, ed. 1986. “Tanztheatre: The Thrill of the Lynch Mob or the Rage of a Woman?” TDR 30, 2 (T110):46–56. Fried, Michael. 1968. “Art and Objecthood.” In Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock, 116–47. London: Studio Vista.

Johnston, Jill. 1971. Marmelade Me. New York: E.P. Dutton. Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 Manning, Susan Allene. 1986. “An American Perspective on Tanztheatre.” TDR 30, 2 (T110):57–79. McDonagh, Don. 1970. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance. New York: Mentor Books.

Janice Ross is Professor (Teaching) of Dance History in the Drama Department, Stanford University. Her most recent book is Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance (University of California Press, 2007).

Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. By Tomie Hahn. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2007; 213 pp.; illustrations; DVD. $70.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Nihon buyô is a genre of Japanese dance closely associated with kabuki theatre. It is situated in the communities and traditions of Japanese arts in which the transmission of gei (acquired artistic technique) has involved personal somatic experience, unflinching—often lifetime—dedication to training, and, more often than not, the iemoto system (a hierarchical and hereditary institution for a specific gei). Sensational Knowledge is an exciting ethnography of how concretely such gei is being transmitted in a nihon buyô school in contemporary Japan, with special attention to the visual, tactile, and oral/aural senses as “the vehicles of transmission and the connection to embodied cultural expression” (3). The iemoto system is also an important subject of the book, with its focus on the Tachibana School currently led by its third iemoto, Tachibana Yoshie, and Tomie Hahn deftly shows us how its practice creates the bond of quasi-kinship (e.g., the custom of bestowing Tachibana names on qualified students) (35–36). Since the holistic concept of gei—internalization of it as one’s second nature and transmission of it to worthy disciples— relies on physical, personal experience, and since the iemoto system methodically constructs an insider world, the subject matter of this book is a perfect fit for ethnography. Hahn, also a veteran disciple in the school who has attained the name Tachibana Samie, introduces us to this world. Chapter 1, the “Introduction,” situates the book in the recent literature of ethnography and details the author’s positionality (noteworthy is Hahn’s strong commitment to reflexivity). Chapter 2 provides a general overview of nihon buyô history and the iemoto system, and gives a detailed account of the Tachibana School established in 1938 by Tachibana Hôshû, the father of Yoshie and a disciple of a kabuki actor. The general overview part of this chapter, as well as the glossary at the end of the book, presents a certain catch-22. Sometimes, information seemingly specific to the Tachibana School appears to permeate general information concerning nihon buyô as a whole. With no language signaling such a shift, it requires background knowledge to surmise this. This task is difficult for readers unfamiliar with the subject matter, but they are the ones who would most benefit from general information. Chapter 3, “Unfolding Essence,” investigates “the energetic qualities of dance” (16). Along with Buddhism, the work of philosopher Yuasa Yasuo and of noh dramatist/theorist Zeami are utilized to explain what ki energy is, how one trains him/herself in cultivation (shugyô), and how to unite the body and the mind. These are all vital to most gei because, according to Yuasa, the way the body exists controls the way the mind exists in the shugyô context. Significant though these elements are, I would like to have seen this chapter after chapter 4 so that these ideas from Yuasa, Zeami, etc., could have been fully developed with Hahn’s field notes and ideas. Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 In addition, Hahn often expounds the qualities of Japanese dance in question by attributing them to Japanese predilections (e.g., “Japanese love of mystery,” “nuance,” “narrative,” etc. [54–55]). Such usage of language implies that each penchant is unique, be it in its existence or in its manner. These characteristics should be presented as the result of an analysis, rather than preset conditions that bind analysis. Chapter 4 presents case studies of training sessions taught by Tachibana Yoshie, and three out of five sections are fully integrated with the accompanying DVD. Section 1, an introduction to a typical training session and the description of the training venue, is followed by four sections, each of which focuses on one aspect of transmission: “visual,” “tactile,” “oral/aural,” and “notation and video.” I find Hahn’s idea of “the art of following” (87)—a student learning nihon buyô by following and imitating the teacher—especially useful. This is significant, for the notion of faithfully following one’s master has long been considered critical to the mastery of knowledge, gei included. Yet in modern times (1868 onward) this concept came to be underrated in accordance with the relegation of the concept copy vis-à-vis original. Hahn’s “art of following” shows living proof of a tradition that negotiates between premodern knowledge and modern episteme. Section 4, entitled “uttering expanses—oral/aural transmission,” examines transmission through oral methods (e.g., oral cues). While the contents of this section are informative, the phrase “oral transmission” used in the title and text is misleading. Kuden (literally, “oral transmission”) is a highly charged term in the context of gei as well as in the iemoto system, signifying not merely transmission through oral methods, but secret transmission in a selective manner to a qualified disciple. In the gei context, it points to an ultimate reification of the ineffable nature of such knowledge; in the iemoto-system context, it is a sophisticated strategy to protect the quality and the value of the knowledge thus conveyed. At the very least, the use of this term independent of such cultural meaning is confusing. More likely, since both gei and iemoto constitute the subject matter of this book, some discussion on “oral transmission” as such would have been desirable. Regardless, chapter 4 is edifying, and in combination with the DVD, it is one of the strongest elements of Sensational Knowledge. The DVD contains 14 clips directly associated with sections 2, 3, and 4. Its audio-visual quality is less than satisfying, but the usefulness of the combination outweighs the technical shortcomings. There are many commercially available DVDs of kabuki from public stage performances, but rarely can we see clips of rehearsals (except for those included in documentary films), let alone basic training, which this DVD records. In addition to Tachibana Yoshie’s impressive performance as she simultaneously teaches and dances, Hahn’s careful treatment, such as time stamping and the transcriptions available in chapter 4, also makes this DVD valuable. The final chapter “draws the disconnected senses together again” (16) and deals with some intriguing issues (ordinary and extraordinary experiences, code-switching, etc.), which could have been expanded upon in further detail. Nevertheless, this book is an exciting, important ethnography that offers sensational knowledge about nihon buyô training and performance.

—Maki Isaka

Maki Isaka is Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, teaching Japanese theatre and premodern literature. Her research interests are gei esotericism in Japanese arts, gender and onnagata, and Osanai Kaoru and modernity. Her publications include “Osanai Kaoru’s Dilemma,” TDR 49:1 (T185, 2005); “The Gender of Onnagata As the Imitating Imitated,” positions 10.2 (Fall 2002); “Women Onnagata in the Porous Labyrinth of Femininity,” USJWJ 30-31 (2006); and Secrecy in Japanese Arts (Palgrave, 2005).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 The Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to Drama. Edited by Eric Csapo and Margaret C. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007; 462 pp.; illustrations. $96.00 cloth. Recent years have seen a rebirth of interest in the contentious theory that drama sprang from ritual, from both within and outside of Classical studies. On the crest of this “New Ritualism,” Eric Csapo (Classics) and Margaret C. Miller (Classical Archeology) have assembled an up-to-date collection of research on the prehistory of drama. As a counter to the default “Hellenocentrism” that has historically dominated the subject, this new and innovative volume features essays devoted to comparative studies of ritual and drama in medieval European, ancient Egyptian, and classical Japanese cultures. Considering all of the specialized knowledge involved, the editors have labored heroically to produce a dialogic exchange among the participant authors and their respective fields, both through their editorial process and through the inclusion of topical introductions and seminar-style discussion summaries for each group of essays. Csapo and Miller emphasize a distinction between the strictly evidence-based approach of their project and the more synchronic interests of anthropology and other work categorized as “New Ritualism” in recent Greek studies (1, 3). Yet the closest the various authors come to a consensus is the idea that ritual and drama share limited aspectual frameworks or “matrices” rather than an evolutionary or developmental linkage (132, 361, 362, 369, 391, 392). A direct development from ritual to drama cannot be proven from the evidence, but how is a ritual framework or even the frequently invoked “Dionysian matrix” anything other than synchronic and theoretical? The term “ritual drama” is adopted by some of the authors to suggest a continuum that would hypothetically “range from an unusually dull Calvinist prayer meeting to Miss Saigon” (3, 4–7). With “ritual drama” placed somewhere in the vast middle range of this continuum, the editors indicate that most of today’s Hellenists would recognize Greek drama as closer to ritual than “drama as we know it,” leaving the latter’s rise to the Renaissance or even as late as the 18th century (4). The editors begin their general introduction by dismantling the usual categories that have distinguished ritual from drama in historical Western discourse, showing how binary opposi- tions such as religious versus secular or efficacious versus entertaining are seldom mutually exclusive and usually overlap in actual practice. The remainder of the comprehensive introduction includes a concise history of ritual origin theories and their subsequent reception. The essays in Part One examine the evidence of sixth century BCE vase paintings depicting “komasts” or “padded dancers” and speculates on their relevance to “predramatic ritual” (41). Much of this material will be new to theatre historians outside of Greek studies, and as a whole the section provides a helpful summary of the questions and arguments surrounding not only the so-called Komast vases, but also of the interpretation of vase painting as evidence for performance history in general. The second section of essays, “The Emergence of Drama,” features an eclectic selection of topics including: a positive reevaluation of Aristotle’s theory that dithyrambic hymns were the precursor of tragedy; an analysis of mythic vs. “realistic” depictions of ritual (which includes a helpful review of the scholarship on vase paintings as documentary evidence of Satyr plays); a discussion of possible narratives in the representational contents of the depicted Komast and Satyr dances; and a wide-ranging essay that ultimately identifies the self-referentiality of the chorus as the “medium that makes Greek theatre a ritual” (245). The essays in Part Three include the cross cultural comparative studies identified above, ending in a discussion that links the ritual dramas of ancient Egypt, Japan, and medieval Christianity through their origins in “centralized, self-ratifying, theocratic political systems” Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 casting the coincident rising of Athenian democracy and the flowering of tragedy as “one of the acute interpretive challenges for the cultural historian” (361). An even more acute interpretive challenge is the problem of what an evolutionary narrative for the emergence of theatre from ritual would even look like. In Kimberly Patton’s summary of the cross-cultural examples, she qualifies a statement that theatre “did not in fact emerge from ritual” with “or else did not emerge and differentiate itself in the way that developmentalist theory would predict” (377). This is one of many general denunciations of “developmental” or “evolutionary” theory that appear throughout the book, although there is no clear delineation of the supposedly underlying “developmentalist views” that “still unconsciously inform contemporary models” (372). Patton also invokes the “New Comparativism” current in religion studies in questioning the formation and validity of categories that have historically defined “ritual drama” and even “mimesis.” Unfortunately, the same sort of skeptical scrutiny is not here applied to the terminology of evolution and development. In his fertile conclusion to the entire volume, Richard Seaford offers several political explanations for how theatre might have “emerged” from the changes in Greek society of the Classical period, the most striking of which is the notion that “rapid monetarization” lead to a “break with tradition in the coordination of urban display which tended to promote the detachment of genres from their specific functions in ritual contexts. Such detachment is likely to have facilitated the splitting or combination of genres” (391). Seaford’s ideas about the “splitting” and “combination” of genres are actually more in line with the process of actual Darwinian evolution than the vague teleology of “developmentalism” so often scorned but seldom defined or specifically cited. Respect for the complexity of these issues and their underlying categories should be extended to the complexities of evolutionary theory itself, which acknowledges multiple levels of selection and the accumulation of small changes that sometimes have unpredictable emergent results. A few new or developed theses do emerge in the book, balanced on correlations of dates and close, comparative readings of evidence, much of it from outside Athens and before the Classical period. The images of Corinthian vases in particular are a valuable addition to secondary sources on ancient Greek performance, as is the comprehensive bibliography. An up-to-date graduate seminar on the origins of performance would do well to begin by reading Csapo and Miller’s new volume together with Eli Rozik’s The Roots of Theatre: Rethink- ing Ritual and Other Theories of Origin (2002), which also takes an interdisciplinary approach, but stresses the categorical differences between ritual and theatre, defining theatre as a medium that the “macro-act/action” of ritual may draw upon. Also in contrast to Csapo and Miller’s cultural/historical goals, Rozik explores the cognitive and psychological generation of theatre, music, and dance. What is still needed in this discussion is an awareness of recent work on “ritual behavior” in evolutionary psychology, memetics, and anthropology, as well as a confrontation with cultural evolution theory in general.

—C.B. Davis Reference Eli Rozik. 2002. The Roots of Theatre: Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

C.B. (Charles Bruce) Davis earned his doctoral degree in 1997 from the University of Washington, School of Drama. He has published in Theatre Journal and TDR, and has taught at Stanford University and the University of Georgia. His first publication won both theTDR Student Essay Contest and the Gerald Kahan Award for the Best Essay in Theatre Studies by a Younger Scholar, Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 (administered by ASTR). Davis is currently playing jazz piano, drawing cartoons, and writing a Darwinian approach to Theatre History and Performance Studies entitledMemes, Minds, and Mimesis: Cultural Evolution, Meaning, and Performance.

And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World. By Anne Bogart. New York: Routledge, 2007; 140 pp. $26.95 paper.

At first glance, Anne Bogart’s titleAnd Then, You Act could seem to imply that this is a book for actors about acting. Well, it is and it is not. Actors will definitely find it useful, although it is not an acting handbook and does not illustrate acting techniques. It is Bogart’s call for action through art. In it she urges theatre artists—actors, directors, writers, designers—to make art that matters. In this thin book, Bogart takes a penetrating look at the post-9/11 sociocultural reality in the US and theatre’s place in it, and proposes a way into action for theatre artists. In the introduction, Bogart expresses her urgent need to intensify the way her art affects the audience and to empower others to do the same. This sense of urgency in the face of trying times underlies the entire book. Each one of the eight chapters focuses on an element that influences the artistic process in theatre: Context, Articulation, Intention, Attention, Magnetism, Attitude, Content, and Time. Bogart argues that, if recognized and used, these elements can help “make the music more intense” (5). Though none of these elements is new, Bogart’s observations and insights, posed as a reaction to the difficult times contemporary theatre is facing, situate them as spaces of cross-influence between life and theatre, where there is a potential for change and intervention in both. Bogart demonstrates how to recognize those elements in life and in theatre, and how to apply them to the creative process. I found chapters three, five, and seven (“Intention,” “Magnetism,” and “Content”) to be the most practical chapters in the book. These are also the chapters Bogart divides into titled subchapters. Chapter three, dealing with intention, follows a series of questions that provide a twist to what we usually ask in traditional play analysis: who, what, where, when, and why. Here Bogart invites artists to ask about themselves and their art: “Who are your colleagues?” “What are you tempting?”1 “When does art happen?” “Where does your work belong?” “Why do you create?” Through these questions Bogart provokes us as readers to rethink our art as part of the culture we live and create in. The last question in this chapter—“How do you proceed?”—is followed by a list of suggestions. This list does not provide a recipe but rather sets the tone, giving certain principles that would shape the character of the work and would make it more relevant and vibrant. Taking intention, one of the most important elements in contemporary mainstream acting techniques, and detaching it from character work, from acting as such, represents another step in Bogart’s critique of the Americanized Stanislavski approach (see Bogart 2001:37). The rest of the book is sprinkled with practical advice and directional signs. As in chapter three, the advice remains general, implying a disposition but keeping away from delineating

1. Bogart uses the word “tempting” instead of “attempting” to insert the notion of attraction as well as to raise the stakes of the risk taken by the artist. By doing so she implements and demonstrates her own investment in articulation. Books

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.2.164 by guest on 23 September 2021 specific action. In this vagueness lies an act of generosity and empowerment. Bogart never states what people should do—she leaves that to the individual artist—but rather she gives tools, or points of awareness for making art in an unpredictable world. This may frustrate readers looking for answers, as they will most likely end up with even more questions. It is both the strength of the book and its weakness. Bogart’s underlying assumption is that in order to create effective theatre, each artist must have technique, passion, and something to say (6). This is stated in the introduction but might be forgotten or overlooked by a reader who is not versed in Bogart’s idiosyncratic language. As in her previous book, A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre (2001),2 she takes the reader through decisive moments in her personal and artistic life, sharing the consequences and her artistic understandings of them. Bogart manages to engage provocatively with current sociopolitical and artistic trends without directly attacking them. She criticizes through observa- tion as well as through personal examples of her own reactions. Her writing seems to reflect her practice of aikido—a “soft” martial art in which one does not attack, but rather uses the power of the other against themselves (see Lampe 1997). In aikido the attackers often find themselves flipped over on their backs by the manipulation of their own moves. Likewise, Bogart’s call for action comes from a receiving position. She takes in the faults and attacks of the unpredictable world—personal, artistic, social, political—and finds a way to turn that energy into artistic creation. This strategy keeps the book from becoming a manifesto, from portraying rights and wrongs; it also dismantles the reader’s resistance in places where the text digresses and may become vague. Perhaps the cover photograph, Alexander Rodchenko’s The Dive, encapsulates Bogart’s position. In the photo we see a man’s body in midair, arched and stretched backward as he dives into the water. We can barely see his face, which is almost facing down, trying to see where he is going to land. Below him is the dark water, and in the upper part of the photo, a deck where four men in bathing suits are sitting. Two of the men seem to be watching him with some interest. The framing of the printed title by the arch of the man’s body endows him with an even stronger sense of movement. Therein lies the premise of this book: Making theatre is a decisive plunging backwards into cold, dark water. You will never know exactly where you are going to land; not until you complete a few flips and turns. But your job, your responsibility, is to inspire the people watching you from the safe, dry deck to jump in.

—Ofer Ravid References Bogart, Anne. 2001. A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theater. London: Routledge. Bogart, Anne, and Tina Landau. 2005. The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. New York: Theatre Communications Group. Lampe, Eelka. 1997. “Disruptions in Representation: Anne Bogart’s Creative Encounter with East Asian Performance Traditions.” Theatre Research International 22, 2:105–10.

Ofer Ravid is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Theatre Studies at York University, Toronto, Ontario. His research focuses on group creativity with the use of physical-acting techniques. He is an actor and director whose work has appeared in Israel, the US, Argentina, and Canada.

2. In 2005, Bogart also published The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Compositionwith her long Books time collaborator Tina Landau.

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