ABSTRACT
In this section we look in more detail at some key concepts underpinning performance theory. We begin with a distinction between ‘aesthetic’ and ‘social’ drama.
This is not quite like the general distinction between aesthetic drama and social performance, where the latter refers to a range of everyday interactions. The more specific term ‘social drama’ is the name given by the anthropologist Victor Turner (1920-83) to a unit of social process which arises out of a conflict situation. He says it typically has four main phases:
This notion of social drama was developed by Turner in 1974 from Arnold van Gennep’s demonstration that all rites of passage, such as the rites accompanying changes of age or social status, follow a three-part structure: separation of the subject(s) from society, margin or in-between state, and reincorporation. Turner’s intention, however, was that ‘social drama’ had much wider application, being a ‘well-nigh universal processual form’ (1982: 71). And as such it is the source of what Turner calls ‘cultural genres’. We may have already noted that the phase of ‘redress’ can be instituted through a ritual performance; but the performances it generates and sustains may be much more varied than this, including ‘both “high” and “folk”, oral and literate’ (1982: 74-5). Aesthetic drama, for example scripted plays, may thus be seen as one possible constituent of the redressive phase of social drama.
