올비의 연극에 나타난 현실인식에 관한 연구

Abstract

Basing the theory of rituals on Edward Albee's fieldwork in tribal societies of South Central Africa, Victor Turner argues that ritual is the field in which the anti-structural modality of human sociality emerges, and thereby it plays a fundamental role in the process of social life. Turner defines the basic characteristics of ritual as collective, subversive, and therapeutic. In the light of Turner's insights into ritual, dramatic ritual could also be characterized by its three traits; collective, subversive, and therapeutic. According to Turner's explanation, ritual symbolically duplicates a collective anarchical experience of a given society in the course of passing a former social state to a new state. Through the reproduction of such anarchical, but playful state, he explains that ritual results in subverting certain negative norms in favor of fostering social progress. He concludes that through the ritual drama, the audience can be free from the normative constraints incumbent upon occupying a sequence of social statuses, enacting a multiplicity of social roles, and being acutely conscious of membership in some corporate group such as a family, lineage, clan, or nation. Being highlighted as the vanguard of a new generation in American stage since World War II, Edward Albee harshly attacks commercial plays of Broadway. He argues that what we call absurd drama is actually very much ‘realistic’ since it attempts to unveil the true nature of our reality while most of those Broadway plays are nothing but the absurd illusions and therefore truly absurd in that they prevent us from facing reality as it really is. In order to help us unveil the true nature of our reality and face the reality, Edward Albee tries to employ some ritual elements in his plays. What is the nature of the ritual elements Albee employs in his plays? Martain Esslin argues that both drama and ritual are collective experience. He thinks historically drama and religion are very closely linked with each other in the they have a common root in religious ritual. He explains what links ritual and drama is collective experiences with the three-cornered reinforcement of feed-back from performer to audience, from audience to audience. According to him. the audience-and each individual in it - must be able to experience its own identity; ritual drama is one of the means by which a primitive as well as a highly developed society experiences this identity. He says, “And in ritual as in drama the aim is an enhanced level of consciousness, a memorable insight into the nature of existence, and a renewal of strength to face the world”(Esslin 1977, 28). Some of Albee's social plays, especially The Zoo Story, The American Dream possess such ritualistic traits. By using theater as an instrument of social renewal, Albee attempts to reveal, attack, and remedy certain negative norms which interrupt the social progress of the contemporary American society, and eventually leads audience to face reality as it really is. These ritual traits are also present in other modern plays as well as Albee's plays, however, are very symbolic and stylized enough to exemplify those traits. In conclusion, Albee's plays are good examples to illustrate how drama is originated from ancient ritual and in what respects modern drama is inclined to return to ritual.