Primitive Drama

Overview

In virtually every culture, drama—both Western and non-Western—seems to have evolved from religious practice. However, because primitive drama came into being during prehistory, its precise forms are not well documented. It must be studied through the anecdotes and legends that eventually led to each society’s transcribed literary history.

Drama, even the secular drama of the present day, resembles a religious ceremony in several ways. Both the religious service and the play are ritualistic. The communicants participate in the service mainly through the performance of an intermediary: a priest or preacher. The audience members also participate in the play through the performance of intermediaries: the actors. The service features music, so the play often features music (song and dance appear to have provided the bulk of most primitive drama). Finally, the play demands of the playgoers a certain act of faith. The audience knows that what they see onstage is not true. Still, they willingly suspend their disbelief for the duration of the performance to experience whatever intellectual or emotional pleasure the play provides.

Interestingly, when the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century Common Era (CE), the highly developed, sophisticated drama the Greeks and Romans produced utterly disappeared. When, after an absence of nearly five hundred years, a crude drama gradually reappeared in Europe, it was in the liturgy of the medieval church.

Greek Drama

The infancy of Greek drama can be traced to the sixth century Before the Common Era (BCE), perhaps earlier. The Greeks honored the god Dionysus, also known as Bacchus and Iacchos, by establishing an annual festival dedicated to his worship. This Greater Dionysia was celebrated in March and was eventually followed by a second festival in Dionysus’s honor, the Lenaea (“wine press”), held in the winter. The popularity of this “god of many names” among the ancient Greeks is understandable. His mother was Semele, a mortal princess seduced by Zeus. He was associated especially with wine and fecundity. It is believed that huge phalli were prominently featured at the Dionysia. Maenads (sometimes called bacchantes), female devotees of Dionysus, danced frantically at the god’s feasts. According to legend, these priestesses would race over the countryside in a sexual frenzy, even snatching up and biting the heads off small animals.

The earliest festivals featured a large chorus of singers and dancers. The term “orchestra” is derived from a Greek word that means “dancing place.” The first evolution of the chorus produced a leader. An exchange of speech, song, or chanting between leader and chorus was then possible. The chorus dressed as goats (an animal believed sacred to Dionysus) or satyrs (a mischievous, lecherous mythical half-goat, half-human companion of the god). The word “tragedy”—a dramatic form central to the Dionysia—is derived from the Greek word tragos, meaning “goat.” The wild and emotional choric hymn, composed in an elevated style and sung to the music of the flute, was called a dithyramb.

In 534 BCE (some scholars argue for a later date, 501 BCE), tragedies were introduced as a part of the Greater Dionysia. Credit for creating the first truly dramatic production has been attributed to Thespis, who may have been a real person or may be purely legendary. The little that is known of Thespis is found in the accounts of others, perhaps unreliable. He, or someone, conceived of a performer existing apart from the chorus and its leader. This performer could pose questions for the chorus members, be questioned by them, and challenge assertions made in their lyrics. The appearance of this performer in the orchestra, along with the chorus, created the first absolute dramatic form in the Dionysian festivals. Thespis, whose name comes from a word meaning “divinely speaking” or a similar word meaning “divinely singing,” is honored as the first writer-director-composer-choreographer-actor in Greek drama. With the introduction of the first actor, the primitive period of Greek drama concluded, and the era of high drama began. It is fitting that actors are still called “thespians” in honor of the first true Western dramatist.

Egyptian Drama

The cult of Osiris and Isis proved important in developing early Egyptian drama around 2000 BCE. The first Greek historian, Herodotus, who traveled widely throughout the Middle East during his lifetime (c. 484-425 BCE), wrote that Isis, goddess of the Moon, and Osiris, god of the Sun, were the only gods worshiped by all the Egyptians. Because a common practice of the Greeks and Romans was to identify the gods of other peoples with their own, Herodotus referred to Isis as Selene (one name for the Greek goddess of the Moon) and her husband as Osiris Dionysus. Herodotus also associated Isis with Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and fertility, because swine were sacrificed to both. He particularly identified Osiris with Dionysus because their festivals agreed exactly. Herodotus appeared to suggest that Osiris and Isis were once human rulers of Egypt; that Osiris was slain by Seth, the Egyptian god of evil; that his widow and son, Horus, eventually avenged his death and secured the throne of Egypt; that the virtues and sufferings of Osiris and Isis changed them into gods; and that Osiris rose from the dead. ,

Greek authors allude to dramatic performances in honor of Osiris but give little detailed information. Fortunately, a recovered ancient stele, an engraved stone pillar, bears an inscription giving a brief account of the world’s first recorded “passion play” as performed annually at Abydos, the city in which Osiris was entombed and to which Egyptians made pilgrimages, thus creating a cult of the deified king. Ikhernofret, a royal representative, was apparently responsible for organizing the performance, and he listed the parts he acted, some thirteen in number, on the stele. The play dramatizes the saga of Osiris at length in many elaborate scenes performed during a long progress to the symbolic tomb from which the man-god would arise. Whereas the Greek plays lasted hours at most, Ikhernofret’s description suggests that the passion play extended through several weeks. Some versions of the passion play continued to be performed until sometime around 500 BCE. The stele inscription is proof that more than forty centuries ago, the passion plays of Abydos were a vibrant part of Egyptian life.

Indian Drama

The tradition of Indian drama is ancient and has mythical origins. Bharata Muni’s Nāṭya-śāstra (between 200 and 300 CE; The Nāṭya shāstra, 1950) describes the legendary ancient creation of theater. The text notes that when the world passed from the Golden Age to the Silver Age, people began to lose their innocence and develop vicious practices. The Hindu god Indra asked Brahmā, the creator of the universe, to give all the people a diversion from their vices. The four Vedas, the sacred books of Hinduism, were forbidden to the lower caste, so Brahmā fashioned another Veda from the elements of speech, song, mime, and sentiment. This Veda was the Nāṭyaveda. When Indra reported that no god possessed the requisite dramatic skill to use the holy book effectively, Brahmā taught the art of dramaturgy to the great sage Bharata so that he might popularize the Veda. He, in turn, taught it to his hundred sons. Thus, tradition has it that the celestial Nāṭyaveda was brought from heaven to earth for the moral improvement of the people.

In The Nāṭya shāstra, Bharata consolidated and codified earlier traditions in dance, mime, and drama. No other ancient book matches the comprehensive study of dramaturgy found in Bharata’s work. The treatise provides exhaustive notes on production and direction. It furnishes every conceivable detail of makeup, costumes, colors, and jewelry. It directs the players’ body postures, styles of gait, and movements of the neck, breast, and eyeballs. It states a theory of aesthetics and analyzes how various sentiments should be portrayed.

As in Greek drama, the playwright, the director, and the actor were inseparable in Hindu drama. However, the two forms of theater differed both physically and temperamentally. Whereas an audience of twenty thousand might witness a play in the Athenian amphitheater, the Hindu theater barely accommodated four hundred spectators. The unities of time, place, and action—developed rather early in Greek drama—were unknown in Hindu drama. Unknown also was the concept of tragedy, for the hero of a Hindu play triumphs over all obstacles. The plays were a mixture of prose and verse and were performed in Sanskrit, the classical literary language of India, except for characters of low birth who spoke Prakrit, a vernacular tongue. Sanskrit plays open with the nandi, a few lines of verse in praise of the gods. Then, the Sutradhara and his wife enter. He serves as a commentator on the place and action, analogous to the Greek chorus. Greek influence filtered into India during the third century BCE, but the Hindu drama had already highly evolved by that time.

Chinese and Japanese Drama

Evidence is found in the earliest Chinese history of the mimetic art of shamans, which were important precursors to Chinese theater. A shaman was a priest or intermediary who could, so it was believed, invoke and communicate with spirits and gods. His special powers were revealed through a performance combining singing, dance, gesture, posture, and costume. According to Confucius (551-479 BCE), shamans practiced in China as early as the third millennium BCE. During the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE)—an era known for the flourishing of the arts—Emperor Ming Huang (685-762 CE) founded imperial music and drama academies, where several hundred boys and girls were trained to sing and play instruments for the amusement of the court. The emperor was said to have tutored the young performers in the Pear Garden of the Imperial Park at Changan (later Xian). Acrobatics became as much a part of the performance as costume and makeup. More mature Chinese dramas did not arise until the thirteenth century. However, most traditional Chinese dramas could be called operas, for not until the twentieth century did a Chinese audience consider a piece to be a theater without music or singing.

Japanese drama's origins lie in the ancient sacred dances, religious ceremonials, and folk dances. The oldest of these dances was kagura, associated with the legend of the Japanese sun goddess. In the seventh century, gagaku, a processional dance play in which masks were used, was adapted from a Chinese dance form. As the twelfth century approached, bugaku, of Chinese, Hindu, and Korean origins, superseded gagaku as a popular court entertainment and Buddhist ritual dance. It was replaced, in turn, by the dengaku, a simpler and more acrobatic form of entertainment favored by the general public. Arising simultaneously was the sarugaku, which began as a comic mimic dance and then developed into more serious forms. These dances eventually resolved themselves into separate techniques. For example, the sarugaku was refined so that it became the basis of the Nō drama, which was perfected by the fourteenth-century Buddhist priest Kan’ami Motokiyo and his son Zeami Motokiyo. The perfection of the Nō theater laid a solid foundation for the eventual development of the highly stylized Kabuki, which arose in the early seventeenth century.

The contributions primitive drama made to modern theater are evident in productions. Although often told orally, primitive drama is responsible for creating the narrative structures used in modern drama. Its use of myth and symbolism is also apparent. Many primitive dramas were minimalistic in their stage presences, and some modern playwrights have adopted this in works meant to focus on character dialogue. Finally, many primitive dramas encouraged audience participation, which has sometimes been incorporated into modern immersive theater productions. 

Bibliography

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