Jack Santino
Bowling Green State University (retired)
Challenged Traditions: Preliminary thoughts on Adaptations, Creation, and Re-creation of Public Performances During the Covid Pandemic
(abstract)
It has become clear during the pandemic how important traditional rituals and celebrations are to people, as Americans and Europeans refused to abandon annual and personal celebrations in the face of confinement. The enforced lack of social interaction led to the re-invention and adaptation of traditional activities during anomalous circumstances. The confinement has made it impossible to carry out direct field research concerning specific instances of adaptation and re-invention or of the creation of new performances. Therefore, in this paper I can only share preliminary observations.
Ironically, while ritual and festival events are routinely described as “times out of time,” as liminal, the period of the coronavirus is itself an anomalous period in which everyday structures and social rules have been suspended. Thus we are examining the enactments of regularly occurring periods of liminality during an unforeseen period of time out of ordinary time. In this paper, I will look at adaptations made to facilitate celebrations such as Halloween in the US; adaptations and accommodations made to celebrate rites of passage such as graduations; and the creation of new traditions such as daily bell-ringing, daily applauding, singing and dancing from balconies, and so on. I will suggest ways in which many of the new performance traditions draw on the particular cultures in which they are found, how they use the built environment, and the important role of electronic media.
Biography of the author:
Falassi, A. 1987. Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival. UNM Press.
Salzman, Rachelle Hope, ed. 2020. Pussy Hats, Politics, and Public Protest. Jackson: U of MI Press.
Santino, Jack. 2020. “Pussies Galore: Women, Power, and Protest at the 2017 Women’s March” in Salzman, ed., Pussy Hats, Politics, and Public Protest. Jackson: U of MI Press. Pp 2-15.
Santino, Jack. 2006. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. NY: Palgrave Macmillan
Shepard, Benjamen.2016. “Urban Spaces as Living Theater” in Les Etats-Unis en Fêtes, Revues Française d’d’ Etudes Americaines. Pp. 107-123.