TDR: The Drama Review
September 1, 2025
Ronald Rose-Antoinette
The anarchic embrace of difference in the encounters of and variations on Western and non-Western spiritual practices in Martinique reveals ways of disrupting the univocal, linear, and centralizing violence of plantation society. Examining the various techniques of collective ecstasy through song, dance, and other sacramental signs of spirit possession calls attention to anticolonial models of...
TDR: The Drama Review
September 1, 2020
Liora Sarfati
1 citation
Korean shamanism ( musok) considers problems of physical, social, and mental health to be a result of supernatural intervention. The unique position of male practitioners who become healers within a female-dominated sphere is especially telling as they perform cross-gender behavior that is perceived as related to homosexuality, which is stigmatized in Korea and often labeled as a “mental...
TDR: The Drama Review
June 1, 2015
Bertie Ferdman
At a moment when site-specific installations, urban soundwalks, immersive environments, and participatory experiences have (yet again) become popular, Jim Findlay’s Dream of the Red Chamber stands in sharp contrast, embracing what seems like the most passive state—sleep. Is it possible, via a sleep-inducing performance, to become conscious of our own letting go?
TDR: The Drama Review
September 1, 2005
Dallas McCurley
Shamanic and court ritual performance in Shang and Zhou China regulated political and cosmic orders by means of performances that structured the performer-audience relations, moving audiences toward some desired response as a strategy tied to the relation between the cosmos and humans.
TDR: The Drama Review
June 1, 2000
J. Lawton Winslade
The X-Files, a “highly disseminated media golem” analogous to the medieval Kabbalah, signals the increasing presence in the media and the internet of occultism. Kabbalistic occultism traces a relationship between writing as an act, magic, and performance.