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There can be no performance without the script — a script is always necessary. As I mentioned above, this seems to establish a paradigm of linear progression: script to performance. However, drawing upon Turner's thesis, it is possible to understand performance as standing in for the script if we construct a cyclical paradigm. If performance constantly recasts the script, altering and reconstituting it, then a performance necessarily functions to script following performances: performance becomes a "cultural actor." This is a critical point for it captures much of the heuristic value that the concept "performance" offers to scholars. Ultimately, performance represents a dialectical form of activity. Drawing upon the terminology used by Dell Hymes, a performance represents the repeatable because it is action which follows a script (scripted action) but performance also represents the emergent because in action a script may undergo some degree of reconstitution which then alters further performances and, by corollary, cultural ideas and beliefs (Hymes 1975, p. 13). Such a cyclical paradigm establishes performance as a cultural vehicle of transformation. When we enter the world of performance, we are witnessing the production and reproduction of culture; in performance, a culture lives and moves.

—Gavin Brown, "Theorizing Ritual as Performance: Explorations of Ritual Indeterminacy," Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2003)

#gavin brown #ritual studies #anthropology #heat 2 midrash