Performing with the Dead

A methodology for incorporating concepts drawn from ancestor trance in Afrolatinx ritual for actors trained in Western methods. Working toward an understanding of the performer’s lived experience while performing, drawing on knowledge of trance in Lukumí and Palo Monte and examining how the ontologies speak to each other. 12 b&w illus.

---

Proposes a methodology for incorporating concepts drawn from ancestor trance in Afrolatinx ritual for actors trained in Western methods. Danowski created four new works of theatrical performance, writing the play texts, and incorporating acting exercises from Afrolatinx rituals adapted for non–practitioners. Working toward a phenomenological understanding of what is happening when a performer incorporates a character, drawing on the ritual knowledge of trance possession in Lukumí and Palo Monte to examine how ontologies might speak to each other.



Constructing a methodology called kanga (from the Bantu for tying and untying), using three methods based on aspects of Afrolatinx ritual, and modified for performance contexts: spell, charm, and trance. This methodology enacts and complicates distinctions between performance and ritual, serving as a contribution to respectful and responsible intercultural performance practices.



The methodology is bricoleur, drawing from ethnography, psychoanalytic theory, and phenomenology. Kanga in practice leads to a state of consciousness that Danowski calls hauntological. This borrows from Derrida but is redefined to refer to the study of haunted states of consciousness, where reality is co–constituted by the living and the dead, where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters.