Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T09:34:50.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Shamanistic Origins of Popular Entertainments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

E. T. Kirby
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A special category of theatrical activity includes types of performance that appear to be unrelated, or only indirectly related, to each other and to drama proper. Ropewalking, conjuring, juggling, sword-swallowing, and other such acts associated with the wandering mountebank, the fairground, circus ring, side-show, and music hall represent particularized skills developed as a means of popular entertainment. One link with drama is an origin of clowning and comic performance amid activity of this type. Tumblers figure prominently in the Chinese theatre, and the Italian commedia dell'arte was probably created by acrobats. The techniques of the stage magician contributed to the illusionism of nineteenth-century drama, and trained animal acts were employed in its hippodrome-like spectacle. Performances of this kind, such as acrobatics or magic acts, when practiced as popular entertainments, seem to relate to the esthetics of drama only through the use of skill and through a common theatricality; they seem independent of considerations of narrative form or of the representation or enactment of another reality.

Type
Popular Entertainments Issue
Information
The Drama Review , Volume 18 , Issue 1: Popular Entertainments , March 1974 , pp. 5 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 The Drama Review

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Title illustration of shaman's trick with snake bag is courtesy of Bureau of Ethnology. Shaman produces two snakes from the bag and a few moments later the snakes disappear.

References

Bibliographical References

Adedeji, J. A. “The Origin of the Yoruba Masque Theatre: The Use of Ifa Divination Corpus as Historical Evidence,” African Notes (Ibadan) 6:1 (1970).Google Scholar
Anisimov, A. F. “The Shaman's Tent of the Evenks and the Origin of the Shamanistic Rite,” Studies in Siberian Shamanism, ed. Henry N. Michael.Google Scholar
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. The Native Races, Vol. 1 of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. San Francisco: History, 1886. 5 vols.Google Scholar
Beattie, John and Middleton, John. Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. New York: Africana, 1969.Google Scholar
Belo, Jane. Trance in Bali. New York: Columbia University, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, Harold. “Function and the False Faces,” Journal of American Folklore 79 (October-December 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boas, Franz. Kwakiutl Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1966.Google Scholar
Bourguignon, Erika. “World Distribution and Patterns of Possession States,” Trance and Possession States, ed. Prince, Raymond.Google Scholar
John P., Brown The Danishes, or Oriental Spiritualism. London: Frank Cass, 1968 (1868). ed. Rose, H. A..Google Scholar
Colson, Elizabeth, “Spirit Possession Among the Tonga of Zambia,” Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa, ed. Beattie, John and Middleton, John.Google Scholar
Curtis, Edward S. The North American Indian. New York:. Curtis, 1915. Johnson Reprint, 1970.Google Scholar
D. W. M., “Oshogbo Celebrates Festival of Shango,” Nigeria Magazine (Lagos) 40 (1953).Google Scholar
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. New York: Bollingen, 1964.Google Scholar
Elliott, Alan J. A. Chinese Spirit-Medium Cults in Singapore. New York: Humanities, 1955.Google Scholar
Gelfand, Michael. Shona Ritual: With Special Reference to the Chaminuka Cult. Capetown: Juta, 1959.Google Scholar
Greenwood, Isaac J. The Circus: Its Origin and Growth Prior to 1835. New York: Dunlap Society, 1898.Google Scholar
Hallowell, Irving A. The Role of Conjuring in Salteaux Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1942.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halverson, John. “Dynamics of Exorcism: The Sinhalese Sanniyakuma,” History of Religions 10:4 (May 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorn, Audrey. Art of the Kwakiutl Indians. Seattle: University of Washington, 1967.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Walter James. The Menomini Indians. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1896.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Albert A. Magic, Stage Illusion and Scientific Diversions. New York: Blom, 1967 (1897).Google Scholar
Jeffreys, M. D. W. “The Ekon Players,” Eastern Anthropologist, 1951.Google Scholar
Jennings, John J. Theatrical and Circus Life. St. Louis: Sun, 1882.Google Scholar
La Barre, Weston. The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion. New York: Dell, 1970.Google Scholar
Lantis, Margaret. Alaskan Eskimo Ceremonialism. Seattle: University of Washington, 1947.Google Scholar
Lewis, I. M. Escatatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Baltimore: Penguin, 1971.Google Scholar
Lommel, Andreas. The World of the Early Hunters. London: Evelyn, Adams & Mackay, 1967.Google Scholar
Marshall, Lorna. “The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen,” Africa (London) 39:4 (October 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michael, Henry N. Studies in Siberian Shamanism (Arctic Institute of North America, Anthropology of the North: Translations From Russian Sources, No. 4). Toronto: University of Toronto, 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Middleton, John, ed. Magic, Witchcraft, and Curing. Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History, 1967.Google Scholar
Mikhailovskii, V. M. “Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia,” journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 24 (1948)Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, Gananath. “The Ritual Drama of the Sanni Demons: Collective Representations of Disease in Ceylon,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11:2 (April 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Elsie Clews and Beals., Ralph L. “The Sacred Clowns of the Pueblo and Mayo-Yaqui Indians,” American Anthropologist 36:4 (October-December 1934).Google Scholar
Prince, Raymond, ed. Trance and Possession States. Montreal: R. M. Bucke Memorial Society, 1966.Google Scholar
Ray, Verne F. “The Contrary Behavior Pattern in American Indian Ceremonialism,” Southwestern journal of Anthropology 1:1 (Spring 1945).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Ronald. Living Magic: The Realities-Underlying the Psychical Practices and Beliefs of Australian Aborigines. New York: Rand McNally, 1956.Google Scholar
Speck, Frank G., and Leonard, Broom. Cherokee Dance and Drama. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1951.Google Scholar
Stott, R. Toole. Circus and Allied Arts: A World Bibliography. Derby, England: Harpur & Sons, 1958, 1971, 4 vols.Google Scholar
Strehly, Georges. L'Acrobatie et les Acrobates. Paris: Delagrave, 1903.Google Scholar
Wavell, Stewart, Butt, Audrey and Epton, Nina. Trances. London: Allen & Unwin, 1966.Google Scholar
Wirz, Paul. Exorcism and the Art of Healing In Ceylon. Leiden: Brill, 1954.Google Scholar