Θεωρία ed esperienza teatrale: azioni rituali dentro e fuori dalla scena tragica

Abstract

Taking part in the ritual actions of the Great Dionysia (θεωρεῖν) did not only mean parading in the large πομπή, sharing portions of the sacrifice or participating in night dances and drinking [Pickard-Cambridge 1968]. A great number of people took their part in the festival simply watching the procession or the sacrifice, or attending the choruses and the dramatic performances [Jameson 1999, Parker 2005]. Being a choral performance, Athenian tragedy certainly has its ritual dimension [Calame 2017]. However, the relationship between the events represented in the drama and the festival for Dionysus is not always straightforward: the tragic plots rarely touch on themes coherent with the Dionysiac nature of the festival; moreover the dramatic rituals do not correspond to the ritual actions of the Great Dionysia.  This paper aims to focus on the ritual experiences of the participants at the Dionysia, spectators of the tragic performances, analyzing some case studies where the dramatic actions interfere with the ritual and festive context. We will focus, in particular, on the characters that assume the role of θεωροί, moving into the scenic and extrascenic space to perform a ritual, attend a festival, visit a shrine [Rutherford 2014]. The absence and return of a θεωρός are used, in the Oedipus Rex and the Hippolytus, to compare a distant festival context with the tragic events represented onstage. In tragedies set in a sacred space, such as the Ion or the Oedipus at Colonus, the entrances and the exits of these characters, and their ineffective ritual intentions, influence the evolution of the dramatic action.Considering the θεωρία as the basic form of ritual agency, we will observe how the movements of the θεωροί intersect the tragic scene, and are exploited by the tragic authors to build their dramatic plots.

Gloria Mugelli ha discusso nel novembre 2018 la tesi di dottorato “Spazi drammatici e pratiche rituali: forma e funzionamento dei riti nella tragedia attica”, in cui ha studiato come i riti vengono rappresentati o descritti sulla scena tragica, e le modalità con cui le azioni rituali intrecciano le dinamiche della performance drammatica. La tesi è stata discussa all’Università di Pisa in cotutela con Paris Sciences et Lettres, sotto la guida di C. Carastro; F. Lissarrague e A. Taddei. Per la sua ricerca dottorale ha sviluppato, in collaborazione con l’ILC-CNR di Pisa, un sistema digitale di annotazione e retrieval per i testi antichi (EuporiaRAGT). Gloria Mugelli è attualmente docente di ruolo in una scuola secondaria di secondo grado, continua a portare avanti i suoi studi nel campo dell’antropologia del mondo antico e delle Digital Humanities, lavorando al progetto EuporiaEDU, applicazione didattica del sistema di annotazione Euporia.