One of my life’s most memorable experiences of being and doing expressing themselves occurred when I attended a celebration at a school in the poor Tanzanian countryside as part of my theatre studies. That night, what I saw struck me as bizarre. As a part of my education, I had been teaching about Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed to kids living on less than a dollar a day. They studied agriculture, carpentry, and electric installations and dreamt about becoming football players and rap stars. At this final celebration, we were seated in a U-shape in a brick barrack with a concrete floor that previously served as a classroom. The bottom of the U hosted the table of honour with the socially highest ranking participants, like the principal, a retiring teacher, and my mentor. On each side, people sat in declining social order down to the end of the hall, where there were no longer any tables, where the youngsters and cleaners found their places on the floor. I was placed at the bottom left-side of the U, close to the table of honours, but yet on another table for visiting students.
Upon entering the room, each participant received two proudly displayed beverages for everyone to see. The MC, as the modern version of a toastmaster, I assume, introduced everyone in the room with a short explanation of their role in school and society. It was made very clear why everyone received the seat they did. A ten-minute dance break was announced, and everyone moved communally to the latest afrobeat. The next announcement was that the time for gift giving was about to begin. The first gifts went to the honour table and were presented accompanied by a little dance all along the U shape. The gifts were often pieces of fabric that draped the receiver, who offered a little thank-you-dance in return. Eventually, it was our turn, and our teacher got a big jar of coffee with each of the students receiving small jars. Transparent and fair, and according to the social structure.
Next up were speeches and courses of food served according to a schedule, and the evening ended with half an hour of unplanned social time. The whole event took five hours. Sitting there in the sub-Saharan night with crickets singing and stars filling the sky, a thought was born. This was a celebration of structure. A ritualised display of control, organisation, and fairness. And it all made such sense: in this country ridden by war, corruption and exploitation, structure is what is celebrated. It makes us different from the animals, separates us from the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak. A rigid social structure displayed for everyone to see as transparently as possible.
Breaking Structure
In my northern Europe, I see a society structured from an almost totally oppositional perspective than that night of Tanzanian celebration. One that is very fair, transparent and yet also very rigid. Therefore, it unconsciously seeks to break that rigidity and structure in order to lose control, mostly through alcohol and parties and especially the combination of both. People get drunk, fuck around, and when it’s over, go back to status quo. It is a celebration of hedonism. However, doing this casually and unconsciously doesn’t go very far. We worry about who might talk about us the next day, if we will be judged by how we let loose, and never be certain if we stepped over any boundaries. We worry about our standing in the social structure we also seek to break out from. Perhaps, then, this is what is bizarre, more than the less familiar rituals I observed in Tanzania.
Creating a ritual around the celebration of hedonism acts as a frame. It limits the experience in time and space – tomorrow, when you wake up, you’ll be yourself again, back in your structured comfort zone. It has rules which make us feel safe and help us communicate how deeply we are ready to let go. It has themes which connect us to parts of ourselves that are suppressed by our everyday structure. Most importantly, creating a ritual involves a collective agreement of collaboration. In my experience, this is what we need in order to temporarily let go and celebrate loss of control. This is healthy because what we repress always finds some way of getting expressed, and if done unconsciously it is often destructive. And this is why I celebrate the breaking of structure and loss of control – and why I organise rituals where this is possible.
