Theatre, Culture & Ritual

Kieran Burgess
Sep 22
5 min read

This free resource is one of a series of units, guidebooks and lesson plans for teachers of Theatre. Although written with the DP Theatre teacher and student in mind, it can be adapted for other ages and curricula quite easily. Resources are adaptable and can be shared with colleagues, but please do not remove the credit to Kieran Burgess and this website. A condensed version of this unit plan was adapted by ISTA and is available on the IB Exchange platform, and the original extended unit is available below.

Overview

This introductory unit aims to develop students’ cross-cultural theatre-making abilities. By inquiring into different cultures and applying the artefacts from one culture into a piece of theatre from another, students are able to bring new focuses and perspectives to work they create. This unit defines ritual as one visible artefact of culture, and guides students through the various manifestations of ritual - both technical and spiritual - in a range of theatres across the world. Through group inquiry, exploration and application to text or a starting point for devising, students will become more informed in several areas of the DP course: exploring world theatre traditions; staging play texts; performing theatre theory and collaboratively creating original theatre; as well as all four assessment tasks.

Teacher materials included in this set:

Teacher Notes
Slides
Side-coaching notes: Bafa Bafa: a game of ritual and culture (This game of Bafa Bafa is inspired by, though significantly adapted for classroom use from, BaFá BaFá - a cultural simulation game developed by Dr. R. Garry Shirts in 1974 and published by Simulation Training Systems (2020). Retrieved from https://www.stsintl.com)

Student materials included in this set:

Handout 1a: Bafa Bafa: rules and rituals of the Alphans
Handout 1b: Bafa Bafa: rules and rituals of the Betans

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Butoh abstracts ritual to represent the perceived losses of its host culture.

Rationale

Any Theatre course is richer through being informed by multiple cultures. A DP Theatre course, owing to the mission of the IB, demands an understanding of at least two differing cultures of theatre-making in order to begin to develop internationally-minded learners and theatre-makers. This introductory unit aims to develop students’ cross-cultural theatre-making abilities. By inquiring into different cultures and applying the artefacts from one culture into a piece of theatre from another, students are able to bring new focuses and perspectives to work they create. This unit defines ritual as one visible artefact of culture, and guides students through the various manifestations of ritual - both technical and spiritual - in a range of theatres across the world. Through group inquiry, exploration and application to text or a starting point for devising, students will become more informed in several areas of the DP course: exploring world theatre traditions; staging play texts; performing theatre theory and collaboratively creating original theatre; as well as all four assessment tasks.

Students will develop...

Knowledge:

Use of ritual in Kecak
Use of ritual in Noh
Use of ritual in Meyerhold’s biomechanics
Role of ritual in the work of Peter Brook
Some definitions and conventions of ritual

Skills:

Application of ritual and cultural conventions to body, voice, space and/or object manipulation
Research skills of source discovery and rating, synthesis and presentation of findings
Collaboration skills of integrating knowledge, negotiating creativity and building upon others’ ideas
Theatre creation skills

Conceptual Understanding:

The multifaceted nature of ritual (spiritual and technical).
The role of ritual in different cultures and theatrical traditions.
How ritual can provide focus to specific moments or themes in theater.
The application of ritual to creation and analysis.
Cross-cultural application of theatrical traditions can bring fresh energy to texts or devised work.

Key tasks

The accompanying documents and slide notes provide detailed side-coaching and additional context for all activities, but in summary:

Lesson 1 is Bafa Bafa: A game of ritual and culture.
Lesson 2 centres on a research task: a jigsaw reading inquiry into different manifestations of ritual from around the world of theatre, covering both technical ritual and spiritual ritual.
Lesson 3+ focuses on the application of ritual to a play text or starting point.

Whilst this unit is possible to deliver in 3 lessons, it could easily be given more room to breathe in 5-6 lessons without much adaptation, or into a longer unit of inquiry if certain elements are unpacked and expanded upon (some ideas below).

Key assessment

The most powerful assessment is ongoing, based on observation, discussion and timely feedback. There is no requirement for formal, summative assessment in this unit. However, some obvious links to assessment aligned with the subject guide exist, and could be applied as more formalised assessment points if needed:

Presenting the research findings from an allocated manifestation of ritual in a particular tradition or theory, assessed using criterion A of the Solo Theatre Piece (theorist) or Research Presentation (tradition) as appropriate.
A reflection task after the practical exploration and creation phase of the theatre piece, before the sharing, assessed against criterion A2 of the Collaborative Project, B1 of the Research Presentation or B1 of the Solo Theatre Piece.
The sharing of ritualised theatre could be assessed against criterion C of the Collaborative Project, criterion C of the Solo Theatre Piece (adapted), or criterion C of the Production Proposal (adapted) as appropriate.

Ritual is core to culture and to theatre, and theatre can include literal ritual as well as portrayal of cultural rituals.

Links beyond the subject

TOK: Can knowledge from one culture transform meaning when applied to or from the knowledge of another?
TOK: To what extent do cultural rituals shape our perception and interpretation of knowledge?
TOK: Can the use of ritual in theatre reveal truths about human experience that other forms of knowledge cannot?
TOK: How does the concept of "ritual" challenge the distinction between knowledge and belief?
DP World Religions: where is the crossover between ritual in theatre and ritual in religion? Do they both achieve the same purpose? Does this differ across the 9 major living religions?

Further potential development

There are many other possible presentations of ritual across different cultures that could warrant exploration beyond this introductory unit. For example,

Pina Bausch
Topeng
Kathakali
Suzuki Tadashi
Ancient Greece
Antonin Artaud
Yoruba Gelede
Dogon Sigui
Potlatch (Pacific North-Western First Nations)
Corroboree (Australian Indigenous)

Also, opportunities for expanding into a longer unit include:

The development of a longer piece of theatre
More unpacking of the theories of Meyerhold and Brook, particularly as the technical ritual of biomechanics and spiritual rituals of the blend of influences on Brook manifest.
Longer discussion around the findings of the Bafa Bafa game.
More time given to structured practical explorations based on the reflections from research discoveries.

Download your copy of the Theatre, Culture & Ritual unit for free here

The set is provided as a view-only Google Folder of Docs and Slides. Please download or make your own copy of any files you wish to edit. Do not 'Request Access' to the Google files as this will be ignored. Please feel free to adapt or add to these files, but please retain the credit to Kieran Burgess and this website. Please do get in touch if there are any broken links.

If these free resources have saved you some time and you want to show a gesture of thanks, I'd be so grateful for any small amount you wish to give!

Buy Me A Coffee