In the course of my interview with David Greig, now published in Contemporary Theatre Review’s special issue on the playwright, 1 Greig’s talk about shamanism and shamans caught my attention. Shamanism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “the beliefs, rituals, techniques, etc., associated with a shaman”. 2 A shaman is “a man or a woman who is regarded as having direct access to and influence in the spirit world which is usually manifested during a trance and empowers them to guide souls, cure illnesses”. 3 Greig is interested in shamans “in traditional societies such as the San people of the Kalahari, or the Chuckchee People of Siberia”, 4 that is, in shamanic ritual as a traditional practice performed across the globe. My contention is that Greig’s engagement with shamanism reveals fundamental aspects of Greig’s approach to his work and Greig’s theatre. At the time of the interview, Greig was working on The Events (2013), a play that draws on Anders Breivik’s bomb attack and mass shooting in Norway in 2011. When I saw the play at the Young Vic in October 2013, the mention of shamanism and shamans in the interview became clearly connected for me to the reference in the play to a festival of spirituality and the enacting of a shamanic exercise. In addition, Greig’s direct allusion to shamanism , I thought, might help me address the idea of the spiritual—“a structure of experience and possibility [whether god and/or religion are included in the equation or not], rather than a revelation of the one true dogma” 5 —across Greig’s work.
Although the spiritual is sometimes explicit in Greig’s work, it usually appears in the shape of a search, a yearning, a reaching out. Peter Nesteruk was one of the first, if not the first, to connect the notion of “ritual” with Greig’s work, by reference to several plays, including Europe (1994). Nesteruk argues that “[t]he tendency of ritual is […] to bring about the intensification of the ‘now’ experience”. 6 Chris Megson has noted a recent “turn towards [a] metaphysical or ‘spiritual’ content” 7 in contemporary theatre, “grounded in the performative evocation of the moment, and […] constitutive of a reach for new values, new possibilities of living, beyond the grip of capitalism, religion and exhausted ideology”. 8 Dan Rebellato claims that “Greig’s work displays a persistent thread of non-rationality, even of religious imagery”. 9 In reference to San Diego (2003), Nadine Holdsworth states that “all the characters are yearning for a sense of self-worth […] that they try to fulfil through therapy, their careers or religious faith”. 10 This aspect of Greig’s work may indeed be read within “a trend towards […] a yearning for spiritual meaning”. 11 Greig himself told Skadi Riemer in relation to The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union (1999) [hereafter Cosmonaut] that “the play is very much about the human relationship with god”, 12 and talking about Damascus (2007), Greig claims that Elena, “the piano player, that’s a bit like […] God or something”. 13 Other references include the name of the protagonist’s estate in The Architect (1996), Eden Court; the religiosity of most characters in The American Pilot (2005); or Claire’s job as a vicar in The Events.
Coming back to shamanism , Greig claims, “I’m interested in an exploration of traditional shamanic practice, by which I mean those circumstances when a community gets together in an enclosed space in order to heal someone”. 14 It is relevant to signpost that Greig’s interest in shamanism goes back (at least) to the turn of the millennium. For instance, in his introduction to Oedipus the Visionary (2000), Greig talks about the AIDS-ravaged Lesotho, where “[m]any people seek treatment from the local Mnagka or shaman”. 15 An ill person in that context is described as “a victim of bad ‘muti’”, “muti” being “a multilayered word, which means medicine and luck, power and magic. It describes a force in the world which, although invisible and spiritual, is as real and powerful as electricity”. 16 To continue with the interview, Greig adds, “I’m thinking of ritual enactions, like telling a story or exploring a theme using music, song, call and response, or rhythm in order to transform someone’s body from sick to healed”. 17 Putting this in a way that would not be at odds with theatre itself, Greig claims that in these ritual enactions “[t]he audience turns up for the experience of healing, or witnessing the healing, or to see the ritual enacted”. 18
Greig is also interested in the fact that shamans and shamanic practice can be connected to the ideas of entertainment and performance. “Siberian Shamans [sic]”, Greig claims, “are theatrical people”, and therefore, shamanic practice is not just about healing, “it’s also entertainment, in the way that, for example, music structures the ritual”. 19 Indeed, Greig’s understanding of traditional shamanic practice is that “it has connections with theatre, not just theatre in a solemn, spiritual sense but also in the silly, stupid, pure entertainment sense”. 20 Besides, as Greig claims, shamans “are very concerned about their performance, whether they’re good or not, whether they are better than the shaman down the road”. 21 This performance dimension brings to mind shamanism’s connection with performance studies. Richard Schechner places shamanism within the framework of the wider term performance:
Performance must be construed as a ‘broad spectrum’ or ‘continuum’ of human actions ranging from ritual, play, sports, popular entertainments, the performing arts (theatre, dance, music), and everyday life performances to the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and on to healing (from shamanism to surgery), the media, and the internet. 22
Greig’s interest in shamanism also manifests itself in his very creative process: “I feel as though somewhere in the darkness of these rituals and the shamanic process of creating them is the source of my own work as a playwright”. 23 Greig has spoken about “this slightly shamanic thing that you need when you’re writing”, 24 a sense of “shamanic power”, 25 described as “the ability to negotiate between different worlds”. 26 Greig is inspired by the “shamanic worldview” which “has three layers” (the number of layers or worlds depends on shamanic cultures), “the world above, the world below and the world as it is”. 27 As Greig explains, “[i]nhabitants of the other worlds [other than the world as it is] can include ancestors, gods, and the animated spirits of animals and plants”. 28 What fascinates Greig then is that “[a] shaman is the person who communicates between those worlds”. 29 In the case of the playwright, the worlds are the so-called real world and the world of the imagination, where Greig’s characters “live”. The playwright acts as a hinge between the world and the work—he has for instance spoken of himself as being “the ‘conduit’” for Cosmonaut, a play that was “given” 30 to him.
Shamans are holed entities because, through a shaman, the world as it is, and potentially, a person in the world as it is, can establish a connection to the other worlds. He/she is a hole . The playwright communicates between/through worlds and therefore is a holed entity too; he is the porous membrane through which negotiations with t...