The popularity of religious gatherings continues more vigorously among the marginalized than among the affluent. The change in patterns of assemblage has not been quite the same for all social classes.
Parts of a western drama movie#
New methods of communication, the proliferation of channels on television, the advent of virtual-reality meeting places on the World Wide Web, and multiplex movie palaces have all brought about a change in the way people gather in public -or do not so gather -to participate at the performance of stories, rituals, and myths. Although, compared to this, the number of churchgoers remains very large, perhaps twenty to twenty-five times as great in the United States, it too has shrunk as the audience for film and television has grown. The immense success of motion pictures and television in the twentieth century reduced the audience for live theater to a very small portion of the population. Even so, theater remained a popular institution throughout the nineteenth century while revivalistic religion, if not regular church attendance, was also vigorous, especially in the United States. The advent of novelistic fiction in the eighteenth century meant that stories could be told to a wide audience without people having to gather in a public place.
Parts of a western drama professional#
More significant than the phenomenon of secularization is the fact that, in most European and American societies in modern times, the professional theater and institutional religion have both become culturally marginal -perhaps for similar reasons.īefore 1700, the principal places for public storytelling were theaters and churches. To the extent that it may be true, it is balanced by the fact that Western religion itself has undergone a kind of secularization: it has, in many quarters, undergone demythologizing, the "death of God," and a radical turn toward political action in "this world," all without losing its identity as religion. The truth of this assumption, with respect to theater and modern society alike, is debatable. It is often supposed that the theater in modern Europe and North America, like Western civilization in general, has steadily become more secular, which is to say, less and less concerned with religion. The ancient and persistent link between religion and drama may be viewed as the result of factors that include the emergence of theater from religious ritual, the acting out of sacred myth and story, the quasi-priestly or shamanic characteristics of theatrical performers and, conversely, the theatrical qualities of religious liturgies. These legacies have proved difficult to maintain in Western society, but they contain the heart of the expectations people bring to theater and to religious ceremony alike. Where drama has kept alive its quality of magic disclosure, it has remained indispensable.
Where religion has kept alive its affinity with dance, drum, and the dramatic appearance of the gods, it has remained vital.
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