On the Origins of Theater

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author
• About the book
• This eBook can be cited
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Introduction: Cultural Practices on Bali
• The Island as a Temple
• Performative space
• Performative time
• Identity as performance
• The Emergence of Visuality
• Wayang kulit
• Dhalang
• Musicians
• Puppets
• The artists’ performances
• Sekala and niskala
• The emergence of visuality
• The Emergence of the Other
• Trance as a meeting with the Other – concentration on vision
• The mask as a tool of possession – concentration on the external world
• Cremation as Liberation
• Chapter 1: On the Origin of the Performer
• Bipedality
• Ardi
• The genesis of bipedality
• Running
• In praise of running
• The runner’s anatomy
• Rhythm
• Gesticulation
• Pointing
• Pantomime
• Gesture as the origin of language
• Mirror Neurons
• Simulation
• Mirror neurons in humans
• Mimesis
• Conclusions: Human beings as performers
• Chapter 2: Paleo-Performances
• Tools
• Lucy and tools
• A technological breakthrough and a cognitive leap
• Performances that use tools
• The functions of tools
• Fire
• The taming of fire
• Cooking and brain development
• Burying The Dead
• Cannibalism
• Sima de los Huesos, Spain
• Body Performances
• Female cosmetic coalitions
• Performances in the Caves
• Upper Paleolithic (around 40,000 to 10,000 years ago)
• The Chauvet Cave, France
• Altered states of consciousness in the Lascaux Cave
• Musical performances
• Conclusions: Paleo-performances initiated transformations
• Chapter 3: On the Origins of Theater Structures
• Templum
• The agricultural revolution
• Göbekli Tepe in eastern Turkey
• Domus
• Performances of the living and the dead in Çatalhöyük
• Çatalhöyük: domus as habitat
• Çatalhöyük: domus as templum
• Çatalhöyük: domus as necropolis
• Théatron
• The Temple of Dionysus
• Chapter 4: The Theater of Writing
• The Emergence of Writing
• The World as Text: Mesopotamia
• The writer’s performances
• Writing as cipher
• The world as a text that can be manipulated
• Text as Performance: Egypt
• The words of god
• Life after death
• The transformations of Osiris
• The Pyramid Texts
• The Coffin Texts
• The Book of the Dead
• Papyrus from the Ramesseum
• Alphabet: Greece
• The invention of the “phoneme”
• The Greek alphabet
• The emergence of the actor
• Chapter 5: Dance as a Source of Drama
• The Paleolithic: The Dancer in the Animal Mask
• The sorcerer
• Imitating animals
• The Neolithic: The Dance of the Simulacra
• Greece: Mimetic Dance
• Crete
• Hexameters
• Κωμαστάς
• The Cult of Dionysus
• Performances of transformation
• The phallic procession
• Dance as a Source of Greek Culture
• Conclusion: Source Performances in a Time of Globalization
• Tibet as an Energy Field
• Pilgrimage as liturgy
• Liturgical prostration
• Performances of transformation
• The Art of Assimilation and the Art of Isolation
• Bibliography
• Index