I’m going to use this blog post as a sort of exercise – or practice round – for my position paper. In Indigenous Mestizos, De La Cadena pulls a quote from a guy named Turner (I forgot his first name and I don’t have the page number, but this is a blog post so I hope it’s ok!) that highlighted a concrete difference between ‘rituals’ and ‘theater’ within a context of Indigenous perf0rmers in 20th-century Cuzco. In his words, “Ritual unlike theater does not distinguish between audience and performers” (1982, quoted in De La Cadena, 2000). To expand on this, rituals involve spectators to the point of absorbing the spectators into the ‘participant’ bubble; in a way, there are no spectators in ritual. Theater, on the other hand, makes a clear distinction between its performers and its audience members. I was instantly reminded of the Inti Raymi we witnessed a few days ago, which could arguably fall into either of those categories (or perhaps both at once?). Ritual may be a reductive category in which to place Inti Raymi, but let’s apply it rather generally for the purposes of this blog post. As audience members, we were very much segregated from the ‘performers’ of Inti Raymi. Adam brought up a great point about the person dressed as a jaguar that snarled at us, which perhaps implicated some sort of audience role within the festival. At the same time, there was absolutely no chance any of us audience members could have been pulled into the festival and performed it appropriately. We were undoubtedly spectators, oo-ing and aa-ing at the boom of the drum, the shake of the hip, and the glance of an Inka. If we accept this, Inti Raymi was theater; it was a grand, theatrical performance. What may be the implications of this? Would someone with Inka heritage be offended at the chalking-up of Inti Raymi as theater as if it could be replicated on Broadway, Hamilton style? Perhaps it can be understood as a theatrical ritual. But again, this just does not sit right with me. It may have been my tourist gaze, but Inti Raymi did not feel like theater. I also may be using a small lens regarding ‘theater’; maybe Turner meant it in a much broader manner? Though I can’t say I know the breadth of what can be called theater, and what can’t be. Grace, help! Do people feel the same way as I do about labeling Inti Raymi as theater?
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Inti Raymi; ritual vs. theater
2 replies on “Inti Raymi; ritual vs. theater”
Yes, I think Inti Raymi was theatre, although even in theatre the audience also in their own way often perform…. think of the way people dress up for the opera and so on.
You have also got me thinking about the ways in which some of the spectators near us encroached on the space in front of them to get selfies (or rather, to get people to photograph them). This annoyed me at the time. But it was also a way to have them snapped on the “stage” itself. It seems perhaps significant that (so far as I could see) the people doing this were all Peruvian, rather than foreign tourists. They perhaps wanted to be part of things, or portrayed as such, while we foreigners were much keener to respect the distance between audience and play.
All this reinforces Dean’s point that Inti Raymi may be seen very differently by foreigners compared to Peruvians.
Hey Shawdy,
I think the idea of theatre is interesting because I would read that as simply implying performance. In my classes performance is taught as a natural way of being, a way in which we produce, create and are seen. Performance doesn’t necessarily imply consumption or that it needs a consumer. In that way theatre kind of implies an art creation, something more. Thanks for your thoughts <3