ABSTRACT
Shamanism is joined at the hip with religion. After Christianity came along 2,000 years ago, religion took over the dialogue between humans and God. Theater took over the dialogue between people. God is infallible, and people are very fallible. We are not guided by instinct in the same way that a camel, weasel, a dog, a cat or a warthog may be. Instinct-driven animals are incapable of conceptually acting against their own best interest. We have thinking, reasoning, feeling brains to guide us. Drama is about our potential. Comedy is about our limitations. Both are a result of our minds, our thinking and our values. When you animate a character, you are saying to the audience, “I understand this about how the character is trying to survive.” When the audience laughs and cries, it is replying to you, in effect, “Thank you! I see what you mean! I never looked at it like that before.”
