Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 12 Number 2, August 2011
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Hammer, Anita. Between Play and Prayer: The Variety of Theatricals in Spiritual Performance. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2010. ISBN 978-90-420-3170-8. pp. 430. Volume 27 in the Consciousness, Literature and the Arts Book Series
Reviewed by
Sheffield Hallam University
Between Play and Prayer bravely addresses the formidable task of articulating the ‘spiritual’ experiences to be found within theatrical and performative spaces, contexts and events and the possibilities for identifying employment and experiences of ‘theatricality’ during religious rituals, festivals and communal rites; specifically focusing on the cross-frame references possible between these two broad and relatively unexplored areas of study. Hammer’s book inaugurates, in many ways, the importance of foregrounding ‘experience’ in academic research in the arts and humanities; not only towards making our ‘reading’ of theatre, performance and religious events more contextually thorough and pragmatically valuable, but also to highlight the future possibilities for broadening our approaches to practice-as-research (or perhaps, better described upon reading this book as ‘experience-as-research’). The trans-disciplinary approach employed by Hammer, also makes the book an interesting source of reference for general readers, university students and academics alike; who might be approaching the work from a variety of perspectives and areas of interest and study such as aesthetics, anthropology, religious studies, and/or theatre and performance studies.
Hammer, pre-empting potential (particularly materialist) critics of the work who might wish to argue that her ‘humanistic approach’ (15) to research is ‘unacademic’, makes her rationale for such an approach to writing explicit to the reader in the ‘Preface’ by explaining how providing descriptive accounts that translate experiences (both individual and collective) as directly and clearly as possible (prior to interpretation), enables the reader to ‘dwell on the theoretical paragraphs with a broadened sense of awareness’ (20). I certainly experienced the value of reading the experiences described through the highly visual style of narrational writing, when dwelling on the theoretical paragraphs (subheadings usually titled as ‘Reflections on …’ by the author) myself, in that the academic critiques of aesthetic/spiritual experiences were not so far removed from the experiences themselves, as they might have been without the inclusion of such a narrational style of writing. This approach to descriptive writing definitely helps to transfer the experiences over to the reader with more clarity.
In terms of citational research, the book makes recurring references to three key writers: John Dewey, who is explored for articulating ‘spiritual aesthetics’ in art; William James, who is cited towards locating writings and experiences closely related to ‘theatricality’ in religious experience and Gregory Bateson, who provides theories of mental processes during experiences of ‘imaginative play’. Hammer also identifies Richard Schechner and Victor Turner as having produced ‘groundbreaking work’ (23) in the area of performance anthropology, and makes some interesting parallels between her own work and the writings of Schechner especially, in terms of exploring the broad spectrum of practical and theoretical frames within which ‘performance’ can be located and further defined in a variety of both everyday and aesthetic contexts. In exploring ‘spiritual performance’ specifically, as manifest in a variety of anthropological, socio-cultural and theatrical contexts; the book is divided into five chapters:
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Varieties of Spiritual Performance and Notions of Truth
Chapter Three: Local Spiritual Performance on North Atlantic and South Pacific Shores
Chapter Four: Dead Man Performing? Interactive, Transpersonal and Group Dynamics in Spiritualist Performance
Chapter Five: Theatrical Reflections on Spiritual Performance
The first chapter introduces the reader to the research perspectives employed towards interrogating the space(s) between play (aesthetic experience in a variety of experimental, festival, and theatre and performance events) and prayer (spiritual experience in religious practices). The subheading ‘Religion, Life, Eventness and Aesthetics’, in terms of both title and content, seems to articulate quite clearly the author’s intention to engage with ‘the breakdown of boundaries between aesthetic fields and practices’ (27). ‘Theatricality’ and ‘eventness’ are coherently introduced through Sauter (27-28), and although quotations from Dewey are arguably unnecessarily lengthy at this stage in certain places; Hammer’s paraphrasing of both Dewey and Turner towards the end of the chapter provide evidence of some interesting critical thinking from Hammer with regards to her developing argument towards positing ‘love’ (defined by Hammer as a driving force for attaining a deeper level of understanding, rather than a romantic notion) as a potentially crucial aspect of ‘craftsmanship in research’ (63).
In the second chapter, Hammer approaches a further problematic use of terminology; the notions surrounding the term ‘truth’. The discussion of ‘primary and secondary [mental] processes’, drawn from Bateson, is providing ground for later writing around the concept of ‘theatrical doubling’ and I also advise readers to be patient here because during the earlier chapters there can be moments of ‘where is this going!?’, but there are many aspects of the earlier writing that become contextualised with more clarity later on in the book (and particularly the concluding chapter). The second chapter becomes particularly interesting with regards to consciousness studies as Hammer (borrowing from James) interrogates the concept of ‘prayerful consciousness’ against its experiential contexts, namely; mystical experience and aesthetic frames in theatrical and ‘imaginative play’ (82-89). This theoretical base is then extended into description/narration of experiences whilst viewing the television series Carnivale, and performances of Mimrestund (Moments of Memory) at a Norwegian cultural/regional/religious festival known as Rĺkvĺgdagene, which takes place in Ebenezer meetinghouse (pictures of which are refreshingly and usefully incorporated into the text).
The potential for further study of the brief exploration of ‘Location Double’ (subheading) that appears at this point (120 – 130), in relation to how a large mural style painting extends the aesthetic space in both theatrical and spiritual ways, would be a wonderful topic to be explored further in the future, either by Hammer or others, in terms of providing further articulation of ‘space’ as a defining factor in locating the space(s) between play and prayer; theatrical and religious experience.
Chapters three and four continue to explore cross-referencing possibilities between the aesthetic frames of both theatrical and spiritual experience within further and very specific socio-religious and culture-specific performance contexts. The focus in chapter three is mostly on the social, cultural and religious practices of Maori culture in New Zealand by way of narrating the author’s own involvement in, and experience of a Maori tangi (funeral), which is then interestingly reflected on as what Hammer refers to as a ‘dramaturgy of transformation’ (175). Chapter four gives an account of the author’s experiences with a Spiritualist community in Napier, New Zealand and critiques these experiences through reflections focused on interactive, transpersonal and group-dynamic currents encountered during involvement with mediumship development circles and demonstrations of both Spiritualist mediumship and healing.
Hammer’s discussion of the ‘aesthetics of communication’ (281 – 288) is also worthy of further study, particularly as the chapter seems to be lacking in a return of focus towards the relationship between Spiritualism and theatrical scholarship and discourse (with the exception of a couple of rather vague references to Meyer-Dinkgräfe (372, 380) in relation to the concepts of prana and solor plexus – the Indian sources nor definitions for which are not mentioned either). For this reason, the fourth chapter seems more valuable for the reader who is interested in the aesthetics of religious experience more specifically than theatrical experience. However, I must also note that the sources of research into the area of Spiritualism (interviews with several local practitioners in Napier, New Zealand) are somewhat limited in terms of any readers who might be searching for an in-depth account of Spiritualist philosophy and practice.
The concluding chapter, ‘Theatrical Reflections on Spiritual Performance’, summarises the book’s focus ‘on the audience’s experience of spiritual presence during performative events’ (385). The frame-related intersections between the aesthetic and the spiritual; the spiritual and the aesthetic, are well focused in their argument that play and prayer are very often interchangeable and intertwined, although the subheading critiquing a performance of Dead Diana from 2005, whilst interesting, is somewhat tangential and thus slightly confusing for the reader in terms of appearing within the concluding chapter.
The book’s concluding statement; ‘In spiritual performance … truth is subject to the use of theatricality’ (414), in retrospect - has actually been developed quite clearly throughout the book’s development, which might be translated more clearly as arguing (as I understood it) for the importance of foregrounding ‘experience’ and considering it more seriously in an academic context because it is crucial in locating the genuinely experienced world of syncretic truths found in the space(s) between play and prayer in ‘spiritual performance’ as found in both theatrical and religious events. These spaces necessitate a suspension of our habitual modes of being and thinking in favour of a highly non-judgemental form of openness (prior to interpretation), as we encounter these ‘in-between’ spaces through both playful and prayerful consciousnesses (often simultaneously) during our engagement with everyday, religious and theatrical experiences and events. These two spheres of play and prayer, in dynamic interaction, are the sources of the variety of theatricals to be found in the ‘in-between’ spaces of consciousness and experience; between play and prayer.